How to present in English

Ever since I was twelve years old, when I was first introduced to the James Bond books, I have had a fascination and admiration for the creator and author of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming.

Ian Fleming with his ever present cigarette

Ian Fleming had a brilliant ability to bring people alive through the way he described them. No small detail was ever over-looked, and he used everyday products to give his characters some authenticity. He was a “people watcher” – a person who enjoyed looking at people and observing their mannerisms, their fashion style and the way they interacted with other people. This interest in people and their surroundings gave him the ability to replicate his observations in minute detail through his books.

Ian Fleming also based many of his characters on people he actually knew. While this sometimes caused offence to some people, it also helped him to create authenticity in his characters.

So. how does this help the humble presenter?

As this blog, and many other presentation blogs and books continue to advocate, telling stories in your presentation can take your presentation from being ‘just another boring presentation’ to becoming a great presentation. One way of telling compelling and interesting stories is to ‘set the scene’ to actually help your audience imagine the scene, the situation or the person you are describing. Ian Fleming had this ability, and while Ian Fleming was not presenting his characters using PowerPoint or Keynote, he was using this ability to become one of the twentieth century’s greatest fiction writers.

Here is an example of Ian Fleming’s writing. In this paragraph, taken from the first James Bond book, Casino Royale, Fleming is describing Felix Leiter, a character that comes up in many of his stories, as the CIA representative, and eventual close friend of James Bond.

Felix Leiter was about thirty-five. He was tall with a thin bony frame and his lightweight, tan-coloured suit hung loosely from his shoulders like the clothes of Frank Sinatra. His movements and speech were slow, but one had the feeling that there was plenty of speed and strength in him and that he would be a tough and cruel fighter. As he sat hunched over the table, he seemed to have some of the jack-knife quality of a falcon. There was this impression also in his face, in the sharpness of his chin and cheekbones and the wide wry mouth. His grey eyes had a feline slant which was increased by his habit of screwing them up against the smoke of the Chesterfields which he tapped out of the pack in a chain. The permanent wrinkles which this habit had etched at the corners gave the impression that he smiled more with his eyes than with his mouth. A mop of straw-coloured hair lent his face a boyish look which closer examination contradicted.

Just from this paragraph, you can imagine Felix Leiter vividly, you can imagine the clothes he is wearing and even the way he smokes his cigarettes.

When we present, and when we try to describe a situation to our audience, giving vivid, and precise descriptions of the characters in our stories helps our audience to build a clear picture of the scene or character. This not only helps our presentation to become more interesting and even entertaining, it also makes our presentation much more memorable. And that is always the ultimate goal.

So, next time you begin preparing your presentation, take time to think carefully about the stories you will use, how you describe the scene and characters in your stories really does make a huge impact on your presentation.

In the final part of how to turn a presentation in to a great presentation I want to focus on 5 tips you can use that will help you with the language you should be using when you present.

So, here are the five language tips you can use that will help turn your next presentation in to a great presentation.

1. Use short sentences.

In modern day English, the trend is for us to use short, simple sentences. The reason for this is that shorter sentences are easier to follow and also helps your presentation feel like it is flowing faster. Another advantage of using short sentences is that it helps you, a non-native English speaker, to remember the key phrases and sentences you need to use.

2. Use Action words

English is an action language, not a descriptive language. So always try to use an action verb or action phrase. Doing this will keep your audience interest high. For example. Use words like:

Developed, produced, created, designed, sold and shipped

Notice how Steve Jobs always begins his presentations with an ‘update’. By doing this he allows himself to begin his presentation with positive, action words that get his audience excited and amazed.

3. Tell personal stories

One of the biggest criticisms I hear from native English speakers when talking about how Korean people present in that Korean presenters always sound inhumane. It is as if they are not human. One way round this is to tell stories from your own life. It is possible that you are taught from an early age that you should not mix your personal life with your professional life. This is just BS! Business is human. Doing business is about human relationships and contacts. So, tell stories from your personal life.

Before is an example of a speaker at TED telling a personal story to begin his presentation. Doing this makes him sound much more human and allows him to connect with his audience

4. Use positive adjectives

In English we like to hear positive words. Positive words stimulate our minds and keeps our attention. A presentation full of negative adjectives is likely to send us to sleep. So, when you are preparing your presentation, check through it carefully to make sure that the majority of words you are using are positive. Examples of positive words are:
Brilliant, cool, excellent, fantastic, great.

WARNING! - Do not keep using the same words over and over again. If you do, you create a Mark Anthony situation (This situation comes from Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar where Mark Anthony repeated the words “for they are honourable men” over and over again during his speech following the murder of Julius Caesar, to the point where his audience began not to believe these words – they became sarcastic)
5. Use Emotional words

The best presentations create emotion. The emotion they create does not matter, it can be funny or sad. It really does not matter. Presentations that evoke emotion are always memorable and always get talked about.
To create emotion in a presentation get your audience to imagine a situation. For example:
“Imagine how you feel when you are stuck in a huge traffic jam and you are five minutes away from the most important interview of your life”

By asking your audience to ‘imagine’ how they would feel in a given situation, allows your audience to feel the emotion you want them to feel. It’s a great trick and it keeps your audience involved in your presentation.
By following the advice given here and in my previous two posts you can turn any presentation in to a great presentation. Good luck and stay positive.

There is quite possibly nothing more focussed when it come to story telling than the traditional TV commercial. You have usually 30 to 60 seconds to capture your audience’s attention, tell your story and make them want to buy your product or service.

Studying TV commercials is a great way to learn how to tell a story in a focussed, relevant way.

One of the most interesting type of commercial is the tourist commercials of various countries. I have studied the recent commercials of India and Malaysia and I am struck by the way the creators of these commercials can tell their story in such a warm, emotive way and in such a short period of time.

Above is the advert from India, entitled “Incredible India”. Although this commercial is two minutes long, the story it tells is ‘incredible’. My guess is that most people’s perceptions of India is a large, dusty, polluted country with little or no beauty to see. Certainly not a country with amazing beaches, gorgeous mountains and fantastic beauty. There are no words as such, just images. These images tells the story of a young (ish) man, travelling round India experiencing the sites and sounds, and thinking about what to write in his post card home.
In two minutes, this commercial changed my idea of India, it brought some wonderful emotions to mind, and had me wanting more.

Above is Malaysia’s award winning advert from 2007. Here is another commercial that brings the emotions of spending a relaxing time with your family, with warm, sunny beaches, beautiful mountains and exquisite mountains to mind. Again, the story is simple, yet inspiring and there is no need for words as the images, together with the song convey the message the advertisers want.
And there is the point for us presenters. We often talk about the importance of telling stories in our presentations, yet the vast majority of presentations done around the world have no stories at all. Just facts and figures, and a lot of unnecessary words. What we can learn from these commercials is that our stories do not have to be complex or long, they just have to be simple and relevant to what we are talking about.
When we are presenting our latest product to our best customer, we need to show them how the product can change their lives, we can do that by telling stories, by ‘tapping’ in to their emotional side, and not just giving the numerical data, facts and figures. Numerical data, facts and figures have no emotion, in many ways they are not meaningful to us. By turning our data and numbers into relevant stories we can turn our presentations into powerful communication tools.

Why is the Cinderella fairy tale so popular around the world? The story has slight variations in different countries, but essentially the story is the same wherever it is told.

The basic story goes that Cinderalla was happily living with her mother and father, when her mother sadly died. Her father remarried, and Cinderella’s new step mother and her two daughters treated Cinderella very badly. One day Cinderella was visited by a fairy godmother who cast a spell that turned Cinderella’s rags into a beautiful gown and she was able to go to the Royal Ball. At the Ball CInderalla met the Prince who immediately fell in love with her. At the stroke of midnight, Cinderalla had to leave as her beautiful gown was to turn back in to rags. The Prince tried desperately to find Cinderella but only found her missing glass slipper.

The Prince launched a search for Cinderalla and eventually found her and they married and lived happily ever after.

There are perhaps many reasons why Cinderella is so popular, it is romantic, it has drama and it has a happy ending. But perhaps one of the things that makes Cinderella so popular is that it follows a common theme of a person experiencing hard times and then over coming those hard times to enjoy success.

When you are presenting, keeping in mind the basic themes of Cinderella can really help you to develop the story of your presentation. Remember to include drama, a little romance (if possible) and show the difficulties you overcame to achieve the success.

Here’s a great video from those guys at Ethos3 (a great resource for presentations) about story telling.

It is only about 4 minutes long, but well worth viewing.