How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

Recently I have been working with a doctor on preparing a presentation where there is a lot of medical data. The problem is that the presenter has only five minutes to make the presentation and will then be allowed to answer question for 3 minutes.

When we present data in a presentation the temptation is to load as much information as possible into the chart, but when we do this we are running the risk of overloading our audience’s brain with too much information. And the information we really want our audience to see and learn is lost in a chart full of unecessary information.

Below is an example of such a chart:

On this chart we have a lot of information that really is not necessary. In this example, the presenter wants to highlight the yellow and orange columns. Other information the presenter wants the audience to see is the authors names and the dates. The four columns at the end of the table is not referred to in the presentation.

The problem here is that the final four columns are distractions. They are not relevant to the presentation or to the point the presenter is making.

My advice in this situation is to remove them. While your boss may not like this, it is more important to allow your slide to ‘breath’ and to give your audience the chance to focus on the information that is relevant. While I personally think that the “author” and the “period” is also not relevant, as these are not referred to by the presenter, this slide can be improved by removing the final four slides:

Now the slide looks much less cluttered and messy. The audience has a chance to actually focus on the relevant information, and the presenter is now showing essentially the important information only.

If I were given the opportunity to prepare this slide, here’s how I would present it:

Now, only the information I talk about is presented on the slide. There is nothing to distract my audience and the information is presented in a clear and concise way.

When we prepare presentation slides, it is very tempting to overload out charts with data. However, we must think about our audience, and so only putting in the information that is relevant allows us to focus our audience’s attention on that information and nothing else. If we want to give more detail, then this is where a handout can be useful. Our audience members can then study the data in more detail after our presentation. This is particularly important when we have a very short time to give our presentation.

So, please think about your audience, put yourself in their shoes when you prepare your slides and ask yourself if all the data in your slide is really relevant. If it is not, remove it.

In his book Brain Rules, Professor John Medina writes about the how the brain works during a lecture or class. Professor Medina takes us through a typical fifty minute class and shows how our brains actually pay attention to the class.

What is interesting about this exercise, is that our brains can only pay attention to something for around ten minutes. After that we start to lose attention and interest. This poses a problem for presenters, as a typical presentation lasts much longer than ten minutes. Most presentations are around forty to forty-five minutes long.

So what can we do to prevent this attention deficit happening?

The first thing we can do is to prepare our presentation into ten minute segments. What this means is that we need to change the speed and type of style we are presenting every ten minutes. This can be anything from showing a short video, doing a product demonstration to asking your audience questions. In fact anything that is different from the previous ten minutes.

What is interesting here is that I have adopted this style in my classes and have found that it really does work. When I am teaching a class, I spend ten minutes going over the theory, I then change the structure by either asking students questions directly, or having them work in pairs. I also occasionally tell a funny story, or give an example directly on the white board. Over the last twelve months I have been able to teach myself to know when that ten minutes is coming to an end and I now instinctively change the pace of the class.

This not only helps my students, it also helps me to know that my students are learning in a better way than previously. Previously, I always noticed that my students were losing attention around the fifteen to twenty minute mark, I have now learned that that attention was disappearing after ten minutes.

I understand that there are a lot of considerations to think about when you are preparing a presentation, one more thing seems to be pushing the limits too far. But we must always remember, that giving a presentation is rarely, if at all, for our benefit, but rather it is for our audience’s benefit and therefore we must do everything we can to make our presentations interesting and educational.

More information on this ten minute rule can be found at that the Brain Rules website here, and below is a short video demonstrating how activity and exercise can effect the way we learn, which is taken from the Brain Rules DVD.

This week I came across two great articles on presenting, and they were so good I just had to give you guys links to these articles:

The first article comes from the Four Hour Work Week blog. The author, Tim Ferris, writes about a question he was asked by one of his clients. The question was: “What books should I read to get good at public speaking?” Tim then gives what I consider a great answer on how he prepares for a presentation. You can read the full answer here

One of the best quotes I can lift from here is “have fun and laugh at yourself whenever possible”. This is so true. Too often presenters take the whole process too seriously, and by doing so they end up unintentionally boring their audience. Relax, have fun and if things go wrong, laugh at it.

The second article I read this week was an interview with TED’s Chris Anderson. In this Bismore.com article, Chris talks about what makes a great TED presentation. You can view the whole interview here   

The following quote from the interview is so important I wanted to reproduce it here.

Q: What kills a presentation?

A: One of the most common killers is a lack of clarity. A presenter has a lot to say but they fail to put it together in a compelling and understandable narrative. There’s too much jargon, or a bit too much chopping and changing. Some people will try to cram too much in, and the audience doesn’t feel like it’s been brought along on a thrilling journey. Too much personal ego can also get in the way. Or if there’s an obvious agenda in which they’re trying to persuade you to buy a product, the result can be truly dismal.

These two articles have so much information for the budding presenter, I truly hope that they will be useful to you.

Animating your slides can really make your presentation come alive. Sadly, as with all great tools, animation is quite often abused and some presenters overdo the animation. When animation is overdone, the message in your presentation is often lost as your audience is more interested in what will be the next animation.

However, animating your slides can be really useful when you want to bring in information slowly. It is not a good idea to put all the information you want to talk about onto a slide and have your audience see what you are about to say. Human nature means that your audience will always read ahead of you. The best way to handle this is to build in some ‘builds’ – “Build” means bringing in your text or image in stages. For example:

I use my presentation software to teach my business English classes. Quite often I begin a class with a series of discussion questions. However, I do not want my students to be thinking of the next question, I want them focussed on the question I want answering at the moment. To achieve this I bring each question in using my animation tools (in this case a build)

In the example below, I have taken 4 slides, and written the question I want to ask on each slide. I have then used the transition function to create a small, simple animation. The animation creates flow and movement within my presentation, but it does so in a way that my audience will not be focussed on my animation.

Remember, my goal is to have student focus on the question and not the animation. This means when I am putting together my questions, I am first thinking of my audience, and second thinking of the animation.

Here is a short video of the finished result:

I hope this little post helps you think a little more creatively about your slides. If anyone does have a specific tutorial request, please feel free to leave a message on this blog and I will be happy to write a tutorial for you.

I know there is a lot of information out there on the world wide web, in textbooks and what we are in school and university. But when it comes to presenting it really is as simple as following a simple plan.

Here is a chart I drew that describes the simple components of a standard presentation.

And really by following this simple guideline when you are planning your presentation you should find that all the various parts fall in to place.