How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

Photoshop is my favourite application.

I came across this awesome video of a presentation done by Adobe’s Russell Brown. If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare take a look at this amazing presentation.

A perfect style for an in-company event, or even perhaps with some of your best customers.

Maybe Google could have learnt something about using an OHP from this guy ^^

When preparing your presentation, think carefully about the words you use.

I am not saying that you need to think carefully about your sentences, I prefer people to be natural and allow their sentences to take on a life of their own, what I am say is that you should build in what is commonly called “Action Verbs”

Action verbs are verbs that describe an action. For example: build, create, design and sell. These words have a very positive meaning and have the ability to catch the attention of your audience. What they do is describe in a positive way something that you or your company have achieved (another action verb)

A great way to build these in to your presentation is through your planning. When you plan your presentation, write down between ten and twenty action verbs. Then when you are translating your notes into English, make sure that you use these verbs.

For example:

“In 2002 we decided to apply for a permit to hold a Formula One race here in Korea. We built our plan around a modern concept creating unique features and designing one of the best racing tracks in the world.

It has taken almost eight years of dedicated hard work, selling and negotiating to get where we are today, but I am please to announce that from 2010, South Korea will have the honour of holding it’s first Formula One Grand Prix.

And we are ready. We have built a fantastic racetrack, designed some of the most cutting edge features and created a complex that the whole of South Korea can be proud of.”

By building in these action verbs, you create a sense of action and power in your presentation and it gives your audience something to be interested in.

Mixing the action verbs with some power adjectives is one of the most effective ways of delivering a memorable and exciting presentation.

I did an interview with the Korean Digital Times last week, and today that article is published.

You can view it by clicking here – The article is in Korean (sorry no English translation yet

Quite often when you are presenting in English as a second language, you focus so much on being ‘correct’ that you forget about being ‘human’. I have sat though many presentations where the presenter was using good words, good sentences and being more grammatical correct than I am, yet their presentation failed in its objective.

You see, in English choosing the correct words, the perfect grammar and the best sentence structure is not going to win you any speaking awards. In English, you need to use tone, stress and the art of silence.

What do I mean? Well, try getting a friend of yours to read a paragraph from any English article, magazine or book. Ask then not to use any tone, and just read what they see. What you will notice is that although what you are hearing is perfect English, with the correct grammar and sentence stress, it will sound terrible. The reason for this is that English needs intonation and rhythm. Without intonation and rhythm English dies. And that is one of the biggest mistakes I see when I view a presentation done in English by a speaker who is not a native English speaker.

So, how do you improve this?

Well the simple thing to do is to use the punctuation. When I was very little, my teacher always taught us to use the punctuation to take a breath and to look at your audience (if you are reading – which of course you should not be doing when presenting) And we can take this advice and use it in our presentations. When we come up to a comma (,) we should take a breath, and when we reach a full stop / period (.) we should use this for a one second pause.

No try reading the paragraph you heard before and try taking a breath when you come to a comma and pausing for one second when you come to a full stop. Does it sound a little better now?

Another good way to improve the sound of your English is to put a pause before and after an important word or phrase. What I mean here is best demonstrated by Margaret Thatcher when giving a speech. The words that she wanted to stress she paused, slowed down and looked directly at her audience. You can view a great example here

What you will notice that Margaret Thatcher doesn’t feel like she’s rushing, she is flowing smoothly and using natural pause and stress to make her speech come alive. She also allows her audience to stop laughing before continuing.
Margaret Thatcher was not a natural speaker, but she used some simple techniques to improve her speaking which made many of her speeches very powerful indeed.
So next time you do a presentation in English, think about your pauses, your breathing and how you can use these to improve the impact of your presentation.

One of the most important things a presenter should be aware of is the way the room is prepared.

If you are doing a large keynote speech, you are quite often going to be presenting to a large group of people. However, most presentations are in front of a small group of people. When you are presenting to a large audience, it is unlikely that you will be able to change the room layout. Most large presentations are done in the ‘classroom’ style or ‘theatre’ style. And this is the best style for large numbers of people.

Standard room layouts

However, if you are presenting to a group of around twenty people, then you will have a degree of control over the layout.

Personally, my preference is for a ‘U’ shape style. This gives me a lot of room to walk around, and it ensures that there are no barriers between me and each member of the audience. Sometimes, you are presenting in a boardroom or a room with a large long table and you are standing at the front of the room. This can be difficult, usually because there will be a limited amount of space in front of you.

I have seen a rather strange layout called, ‘square shape‘ this layout has a large square inaccessible area in the middle, and I find it a layout that is particularly difficult to present to as there will always be a line of people who have to turn around to see your presentation. If you are faced with this layout, ask the organiser to remove a line of chairs and turn it into a ‘U’ shape. You can always add a line of chairs behind the back row.

This is another reason why you should always arrive at your presentation venue at least one hour before your start time. Making sure that the room is set up how you want it, with as few barriers between your audience as possible is essential for a successful presentation.

One more thing I would add, is that where you place your computer for your presentation is important. You do not want to be turning away from your audience to glance at your notes, and neither do you want your computer to act as a barrier. Make sure that your computer is viewable by yourself, but not in a way that causes you to turn away from your audience.