How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

During a presentation, there will be times when you will have to talk about the past, present and future. Using the right words to describe these periods of time is important. Here are a few examples.

During the 1980′s we were developing strategies to break in to the American market

In the 1990′s we launched our first products in America

Last year we broke all our previous sales records

In the next 5 years we plan to launch our products in Europe

Next year we will see our first Japanese office open

Being able to use the correct time expressions in English enables you to maintain a coherent and smooth story line when you are giving your presentation.

It is very important to keep words and expressions simple. Trying to sound more sophisticated often leads you down the road of boring presentations. If you ever watch a Steve Jobs’ keynote, you will notice that he always keeps his words and expressions short and simple and he does this for a very simple reason. He knows that not all his audience understands the technicalities of a computer. You too need to remember, that in most of your presentations, your audience will be made up of engineers, salespeople and marketeers. Keep it simple.

If you need to put in a lot of time expressions consider a timeline chart like the one below.

By getting your time expression right, you will be able to keep your story moving forward smoothly and gently and this will help your audience to follow the story better and ultimately find your presentation more interesting and enjoyable. And that always is our goal.

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The beginning of a presentation can be a make or break moment in any presentation. So to get the beginning right is very important.

Like “chat up” lines the more complicated, the bigger the chances it will not work. I would always recommend that you use a simple beginning.

For example:

“Good morning, everyone and thank you for coming”

You could then continue and introduce yourself.

“my name is Carl Pullein and I am the Academic Director at the Songpa BCM Language Institute in Seoul”

Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen has a fantastic beginning to his presentations.

Above is a video of Garr at the Synergy Conference earlier this year. Garr uses images from his life, his environment and it tells his audience much more about himself than just standing up with a list of bullet points on the screen behind him.

I also love the way that he uses a little animation to say “thank you” (you will catch all this in the first 5 minutes of the video, but to be honest, you can learn an awful lot by taking 45 minutes out to watch the whole video.

The next stage of the presentation is to tell your audience what you are going to talk about, and how long your presentation will last. For example:

“I’m going to divide my talk into 3 parts – First I will …… then I will …. finally I will …. I expect to be talking for about 45 minutes”

A quick tip: Dividing your talk in to three things is a great number. It is not always possible to do this, but the human mind works much better when it has to organise in threes.

So, getting the beginning right, will set up the rest of your presentation. So when you are planning your presentation, think about how you will begin your presentation, how long the beginning will last, and how can you capture your audience’s attention.