1. Presentation
Definition
An oral presentation is a brief discussion of a focused topic to a group of listeners in
order to impart knowledge,
create awareness, stimulate discussion, explain plans, get support or
cooperation, or share the results of research.
It is a
short speech or talk on a well-defined topic delivered to an audience in order to disseminate knowledge, get approval or support,
persuade them to perform an action or create awareness on a social issue.
The Wikipedia defines it as the process of presenting a topic to
an audience. It is typically a demonstration, introduction, lecture or speech meant to inform, persuade or build goodwill.
Like any research paper or some
other document like a report or article, it has a beginning,
a middle and an end.
The beginning contains the introduction
in which the presenter explains the objective of
the presentation and the meaning of the topic it
deals with. It may also say something about the background
of the topic and its importance. The middle is
the body of the presentation. It is the largest and the most important part of a presentation.
In it, the presenter puts forward the arguments or the
data in an organised manner, analyses it and
arrives at some results.
The ending
winds up the presentation. Here the presenter gives the conclusions that he has arrived at through the
arguments or the analyses of the data he has collected.
a) Planning a Presentation:
Making a
presentation is an art that has to be learnt and cultivated. It can be divided
into three stages.
1. Planning:
Audience
Awareness:
While planning a presentation,
you have to keep in mind your aim in making the presentation, the audience to whom you are going to make it, the main points you are going to present and the results that you expect it produce. At the planning
stage, you have to consider the following questions:
I.
Who am I speaking to?
II.
What is their intellectual level?
III.
Do they know the language am going to use?
IV.
How proficient are they in the language I am using?
V.
What kind of topic/s they would be interested in or
what kind of information do they need?
VI.
What do they already know about the topic?
VII.
What more will they want to know about it?
VIII.
What do I want them to know about it?
IX.
You have to keep in mind that what they want to know
is more important than what you want to tell them.
If you keep these questions in
mind while planning and preparing your presentation, it will put you in tune
with your audience.
Presentation and Report
Another thing that you have to
remember is that a presentation is different from a
report which is meant to be read. If you
are reading a report, you can take your time, go back
and reread if you do not understand something when you read it the first
time. But these things are not possible in the case of a presentation. The audience have to keep pace with the presenter. It is not possible for them to go back and listen again to
something which they have not been able to understand. Therefore, a presentation is ruined if it is too difficult or if its
structure is too complicated. Keeping in view these things, you should
follow the following guidelines.
I.
Make it lighter than a
report. Put less content in it
than you would put in a report.
II.
Make it easier for the
audience to understand by preparing the
audience to receive the
points that you are going to make.
III.
Repeat them at
the end of the presentation.
IV.
Leave time for the
audience to ask questions to
clarify anything that they have not understood.
b) Preparing a
Presentation
The job of preparing a
presentation involves a series of steps which are given below:
I.
Selecting the
topic: The first step in preparing a presentation is to select a topic. As
stated above, you have to keep your audience and its needs and interests in
mind while choosing a topic.
II.
Deciding the
information you need: Having selected the topic, you have to decide what
kind of information you need for the presentation on the topic you have
selected.
III.
Identifying the
sources of information: Next, you have to identify the sources from which
you will be able to get the required information. There are many possible
sources where you can find the information.
1. A library is very rich source of
information. Information related to most of the topics is available in the
books, magazines, journals or newspapers, both old and new, stocked in the
library.
2. Old files of your own or some other
organisation are another source of information. Sometimes, the information you
need may be available in the old files of some social organisation or a
government office.
3. In some
cases, you may have to collect the information from your own observation. You may conduct an experiment
and note down the results.
4. You may,
in certain cases, have to collect the information from the people by contacting them personally or
through correspondence.
IV.
Collecting the
Information: After identifying the sources, we have to access
them and collect the desired information. We can use any of the following
methods for the purpose depending on the source from which it is available.
1. Reading: If the information is available
in some books, journals etc., you can get it by reading them.
2. In case
the data is available in the old files of some organisation, we can request the
organisation concerned to show us the
files and get the relevant data.
3. We may,
in some cases conduct our own experiments and observe
the results.
4. If the
information has to be collected from the
people, we have to contact them to get
the information. For this purpose
·
We may get into touch with them personally and interview them.
·
We can also contact them telephonically and gather the information we
need.
·
We can also write
letters to them and request them to supply the desired information.
·
We can prepare a questionnaire
and send it to them by post or give it to them personally and request them
to answer the questions.
·
We can also give an
advertisement in the press requesting those who have the desired
information to give us the information.
V.
Classification
and organisation of the data: After collecting the information, we have to
classify it into different categories in order to make it possible for us to
arrive at some conclusions. For this, we have to establish certain categories,
select the data belonging to the different categories from the confused mass
that we have collected and assign it to those categories.
VI.
Analyses of the
Data: When we have organised the data into the different categories, we study
and analyse it so that we may be able to arrive at some conclusions.
VII.
Drawing
Conclusions: After analysing the data, we draw some conclusions on the basis of the
information contained in different categories.
VIII. Drafting the Presentation: Now we
can prepare a rough draft of the presentation containing the introduction, the
main body and the conclusions and recommendations, if any.
IX.
Preparing the
aids: The next step is to prepare the different kinds of audio, visual or
audio-visual aids we need to make the presentation. These aids may be pictures, maps, graphs, tables, lists of main points, audio
recordings, models, films, videos or even the actual objects. During the
presentation, you can show the aids physically, use an overhead projector, or
use the power point software to make slides and use the computer projector to
show them. If we have a film or an audio or video recording, we can play it
before the audience and let them see or hear as the case may be.
X.
The last step is to give the final shape to the
presentation and arrange the
different kinds of aids we are going to use in the order in which we are
going to use them.
C.
Making a Presentation
Even a well prepared presentation fails to click with the audience if it is not well presented. Making a presentation is
an art which has to be
learnt. There are a lot many things which
the presenter has to master in order to make a
successful presentation. We are going to discuss below some guidelines which
can help a presenter to make his presentation effective and succeed in
achieving his objective.
Things to be done before the presentation begins:
i.
Getting to know the Audience
The
first thing for the presenter to do is to find out the nature,
character and size of the audience that he is going to face. He should
get some information about who are the people
that will constitute his audience, how many people will be present in the audience, and
what are the things that they are interested in. This
will help him to get into tune with the audience.
ii.
Inspecting the Venue: He should inspect the place where he is going to make the presentation and
find out whether it is large enough to hold the
expected audience. If not, he will have to
evolve a strategy to deal with the audience which
will not be comfortably seated.
iii.
He should also inspect what kind of equipment will
be available to him, whether he will have a computer projector or an
overhead projector or he will have to do with a black or white board, whether a dais will be there or not and what kind of public address system he will get. It is also necessary to make sure that it is in good working order so that he may not face
problems when he makes the presentation.
iv.
He should make sure that he has all
the aids he will be using with him and arrange them in the order in which he
has planned to use them.
v.
He should also ascertain the time that will be available
to him for making the presentation so that he may be plan his presentation
accordingly.
Making the Presentation
i.
The
first thing for him to do is to greet
his audience.
ii.
After
duly greeting the audience, he should introduce
himself. Proper introduction is necessary not only to make his identity
known but also to present his
credentials i.e. to make it to known to the
audience that he is the right person to make the
kind of presentation that he is actually going to do. It will make the audience take interest in the presentation and listen
with attention. The audience will not pay due to attention if they doubt his
credentials.
iii.
Before
the start of the presentation, the audience is generally busy in talking. It
would be wrong to plunge immediately into the presentation. It is necessary to get the attention of the audience
before coming to the actual presentation. He should start the presentation by saying something which immediately catches the attention of the audience. He can start it
with an interesting
anecdote, with a shocking statement, with
a quotation from some well-known authority on
the subject, or with an illustration from real life,
by asking a question or by quoting a verse. This will help him to make them
stop their conversation and start paying attention to him.
iv.
When
he is sure that he has got their attention, he should give them the title of his presentation,
explain the importance
of the subject that he has chosen and
a brief idea of
the kind of information that he is
going to give them on the subject. He should let them know the scope as well as
the limitations of his presentation by telling them about the
aspects of the subject that he will be covering in it and the things that he
will not be covering. He should also give them an idea of how much time he is going to take.
v.
He
should then explain
the purpose of the presentation and
give them a brief
outline of the presentation. For example, if he is giving a
presentation on some problem, he can tell them that he will go into the
consequences we are likely to face if the problem is not solved and the causes
responsible for the problem and suggest some solutions also.
vi.
Having
thus prepared the audience to receive the information he has brought, he can now turn to the
main body of his presentation and share whatever information he has.
vii.
While
delivering the main body of the presentation, he should take care that the content supports
the purpose that he has in view. While it is important to put into the presentation information
enough to develop your ideas, you
should also keep in mind the time available and limit his
presentation accordingly.
viii.
Proper sequencing of the
ideas is also very important. Haphazardly
arranged information leaves the audience confused. There are different ways of
sequencing the information. The choice depends on the nature of the topic.
1. Logical order:
Arranging the material in the order of importance starting
with the most important and going down to the least important or starting with
the least important and going up to the most important.
2. Chronological order: Arranging the events or incidents in the order in which they took place
starting with the earliest and going up to the last.
3. Start with the general and move on to the specific.
4. Start with the known and move on to the unknown.
5. Start with the
accepted and move on to the controversial.
6. Follow the causes and effect order pointing out the cause and then describing the
effects.
7. Problem solving arrangement. Explain the problem and
its causes and then suggesting the solutions.
8. Pyramid: He
can begin with the arguments and then move on to
the conclusion.
9.
Inverted Pyramid: He can begin with the conclusion and then go on to give the arguments.
ix.
Signposting: He should go on telling the audience
where they are,
what they have discussed
and what they are going to
discuss next.
x.
Listing: He should list the different points
by assigning them numbers.
xi.
Linking the Ideas: He should make his presentation a coherent whole by linking the
different parts. The links can be made explicit by using the following
devices:
1. He should keep referring back and forward showing the link between what is being said and what was said earlier
or will be said later.
2. When he has concluded one part of the
presentation and is going to move on to the next section, he should signal the
transitions by telling the audience about what he is going to
discuss next.
3. He can also link the different parts
of the presentation by establishing a cause and effect relationship between them.
4. He can also link them by establishing
a temporal
relationship among them i.e. by
arranging them in order in which they happened.
5. He can also establish a link by dividing the matter into two
parts – that which he supports and that which he is opposed to.
6. He can also divide the material into different parts
according to the way different people (for
example the government and the people, the employer and the employees, the
producer and the consumer, the students and the teachers, the old generation
and the young generation, the orthodox and the progressive, the religious and
the secular) will
look at something.
xii.
He
should also take care that he makes his ideas clear
to the audience and convinces them of the
correctness of what he is telling them. He can use the following
techniques for the purpose:
1. Give examples to help the audience to understand what he is telling
them.
2. Rephrase what
he has said i.e. explain what he has said in different and easier words which
will help them to understand what he has said.
3. Repeat a point if he feels that the audience might not have understood it the
first time.
4. Summarise what he has said at the end of every part.
5.
Emphasise certain points which
he thinks are more important.
6. Refer back and forward to enable them to see the connection between the
different parts of the presentation.
7. Quote the opinion of an expert or authority on the subject to make his ideas
clear to the audience.
8.
Refer to common knowledge by using such phrases as ‘you all know that………..’
or ‘everybody knows that…………….’ or ‘it is an accepted fact that………..’
Conclusion
You
can conclude your presentation by briefly going over (summarising)
what you have communicated once again. The concluding part of
the presentation can be divided into four
parts.
1. You point out what you have tried to communicate, your objective (aim) in making the presentation, the main points you have made in the presentation.
2. This can be
followed by a brief
conclusion in which you
explain the message
communicated, the
lessons learnt, the recommendations made and the follow up action required to be taken.
3. Then you thank the audience for giving you a patient hearing and cooperating with
you.
4. Last but not
the least, you invite the audience to ask any questions that they
may like to or to have a discussion. If
you are confident that you have all the knowledge about
the subject and can any questions that they may ask, you should invite them to ask questions. If you are not so
confident or you feel
that your knowledge of the subject is just as much as theirs or slightly
better, you can ask them to give their comments or to have a discussion. You accept frankly that you cannot answer all their questions and the audience may have some clear ideas or
practical knowledge of the subject and you are willing to be enlightened.
In addition to what has been said above, we
may add some general guidelines.
1. Dress
smartly. Your turn out makes the first impression on the audience.
A shabbily dressed presenter loses the respect of the audience.
2. Look cheerful throughout. Do not
look show any signs of nervousness.
3. Make eye contact
with the audience in order to strike a rapport with them. Do not keep looking
at one part of the audience all the time thus making the rest of the audience
feel ignored. Keep your eyes moving from one section of the audience to another
so that everyone feels that he/she is important
4. Use body language to the best effect. It makes you look confident. Do
not keep glued to one place. Keep moving around. Do not keep your hands in your
pockets or on the podium all the time. Use them to make gestures. Make use of
your facial expressions also to reinforce your message.
5. Make effective use of the audio-visual aids that
you may have arranged. They keep you from being nervous and, if used
properly, help the audience to grasp the message easily besides making the
presentation interesting.
6. Do not let your presentation become monotonous and boring. Lend it
variety by introducing some interesting anecdotes and
interspersing it with touches of humour.
7. To avoid nervousness, practise it at home a number of times before an
imaginary audience. It will give you confidence.
8. Remember
that people do not notice your
mistakes as much as you think they do.
9. Do not read out your talk from the written
text that you may have. It is all right to
refer to the notes that you may carry now and then. But do not depend too much
on them.
10. Keep within
the time limit.
11. Speak clearly
enough to be understood and loudly
enough to be heard.
12. Give proper pauses. Be careful that the location and
duration of your pauses is correct. Pause at the end of a semantic unit, not in
its middle. Let the duration vary
according to the location of the pauses. Do not make your pauses too long. It
gives the impression that you have forgotten what you wanted to say.
Role
of Body Language and Audio-visual Aids
in an
Oral presentation
A. Body Language
An oral
presentation is an exercise through
which you try to communicate the results of your
research to an audience or highlight the
importance of a plan or proposal or share
your views about a social, political or economic issue with them, or create awareness about a problem or explain a complicated academic topic to them.
The results of your
presentation depend not only on its verbal content but on many
other things that accompany the words that you use. According to Prof.
Albert Meharbian, only 7 percent of
your meaning is communicated through
words. 55% of the meaning is communicated by your facial
expressions and 38% by the paralinguistic
features like tone,
rhythm, pace and volume of your voice. That is why it is said that one
should listen
not only with one’s ears but also with one’s eyes. Body language and audio-visual aids also contribute to the success of your presentation in
a big way. Following are the ways in which body language and audio-visual aids help
to enhance the effectiveness of your presentation:
1. Engaging
attention - The first
thing that the body language does is that it catches the attention of the audience. Your
looks, turn out, gait, and posture give the
first impression about you to the audience. The moment you enter, the
audience begin to look at you. And the first bit of communication that you have with them is by looking at them, by responding to their greetings, by waving
your hands or by giving them a smile and a nod. And they look back at you with expectation.
2. Holding
Attention – Your body language keeps the audience’s attention focused on you. If
you keep standing like a statue and go on
speaking without moving anything except your lips and tongue, their attention will soon begin to wander because words alone do not have the power to hold their attention
for long.
3. Reinforcement
– It reinforces
the ideas that you express through words. Your gestures, the tone,
rhythm, volume and pace lend force to those ideas.
They show how important they are and how seriously
you want them to be taken. It signals
urgency, significance and the great need
that the society has for them.
4. Clarification – It helps you to clarify
what you express through words. When words
fail you, body language comes to your help. There may be times when what you say does not help the audience to get your
meaning as clearly as your body language. Sometimes, the audience may not hear you clearly but they still
may get your meaning by seeing your gestures or
with the help of your tone, volume etc.
5. Establishing rapport with the audience - Your body language helps you to strike a rapport with the audience. You look at
them and they look back at you. They tell you
through their looks that they are ready to listen and your looks assure them that you will not betray their
expectations.
6. Lending
liveliness and interest – Body
language makes your presentation lively and
interesting. It keeps the sense of boredom
away from the audience. The delivery of words
alone will make your presentation flat and dull and the audience will
soon lose interest and begin to yawn. But your gestures, your exchange
of looks with them, the expression in your
face and in your eyes, your smile and the like make your presentation entertaining besides being informative.
7. Expressing
deep emotions – Words alone cannot do
justice to powerful emotions like anger, anxiety,
excitement, thrill etc. But when they are supported
by your gestures and the modulation of your
voice, they gather a force which is
impossible to resist.
8. Retention – Body language makes what you say stay long in the
minds of the audience. Information imparted through words alone is likely to be
forgotten soon because words are difficult to remember. We remember what we see
more easily and longer than what we hear. The memory of your gestures and the
tone of your voice keep haunting them for years.
9. Lending
credibility – Body language lends credibility to what you say if you say it with
confidence. On the other hand, if you exhibit lack
of confidence, the audience will doubt the truth of what you tell them because
it will give them the feeling that you do not believe in it.
10.
Persuasion –
Your body language and the tone etc. of your
voice have a much greater power to persuade than
words. Your arguments become much more
convincing when they are accompanied by appropriate body language than
they would otherwise be.
11.
Naturalness and spontaneity – Use of body language is
instinctive. It comes spontaneously and
naturally. You do not have to tell a child when to cry and when to
smile. And the naturalness and spontaneity of the
body language convinces the audience of the sincerity of what you say.
In
short, we can say that a presentation without body language is a body without a
soul. All the organs or there but there is no life in it. Great speakers are
the people who know to make the fullest use of this powerful tool.
B. Audio-visual Aids
No presenter gives
a presentation without using audio-visual aids these days. And there is ample
justification for doing so. The use of these aids, if
used judiciously and imaginatively, enormously enhances
the effectiveness of a presentation. Effective use of audio-visual aids
can make an oral presentation a memorable event which is hard to forget. On the
other hand, a presentation without them is dull and drab affair which soon passes out of the mind of the audience. Although their role is complementary to that of the contents of a
presentation, they help us to internalise the
contents more easily and more thoroughly than we would otherwise be able
to do. They help us to assimilate what we
hear without much effort just as water helps
us to digest food. The following discussion will make the importance of the use
of audio visual aids clear beyond any doubt.
1.
Grabbing attention – A presenter may
not be able to get the attention of the audience for the first few minutes if he/she does not use audio
visual aids but with their help, he is able to grab their attention from the word go. The
audience may, for the moment ignore what he says but it is impossible for them
to ignore what he shows them.
2.
Retaining attention – After catching the attention, the
next problem of the presenter is to keep it throughout the presentation. Again,
it is the audio visual aids that come to his help. Continuous
use of audio visual aids keeps the audience focused all the time on the
presentation.
3.
More efficient transmission of the
message – With the
help of the audio visual aids, the message can
be transmitted more
efficiently and more effectively. Some in the audience may not be able to grasp the point when it is presented orally. But when the information is supplemented with the visual aids, even a complex message becomes clear to everybody. Visual aids clarify what does not
become clear through words alone.
4.
Reinforcement of the message – Audio visual aids reinforce the message given through words. Thus
they increase the absorption of the message
manifold. Message is hammered into the audience’s mind with such force
that it is not only easy to grasp but also
impossible to forget.
5.
Power of persuasion – Audio visual aids increase the persuasive power of the presentation.
A study conducted has revealed that the use of such aids increases the persuasive power of
the presentation by 43 percent.
6.
Help in retention - It is much easier to remember a
message conveyed through visual images and for a longer time too. Statistics
show that only 70 % percent of the people can
remember the message given only verbally after
three hours. But
a very large number of them can remember it even after three days. 60 % of
them can retain a visually enhanced message whereas only 10% can do so if it is transmitted only though words.
7. Help to visual learners – All people are not good auditory learners who are able to
synthesise information presented through lectures and speeches. Some people are good at visual learning. They can better grasp the information
provided through moving or still images.
8.
Making it more interesting – Audio visual aids make the
presentation more lively and interesting. A long speech becomes boring and flat
but visuals provide a change and thus relieve the boredom. The audience is not only enlightened but also entertained. The change and variety they lend is welcome in addition to being helpful in
internalising the information. Visuals stimulate
their interest in the presentation and they listen
with greater enthusiasm.
9.
Boosting the presenter’s confidence – Audio visual aids reduce the pressure on the presenter and boost his confidence.
They are an aid to his memory. All he is worried about is how to explain the visuals.
The tension caused by the anxiety of remembering
things is reduced and he can breathe
easy.
10. Improving the presenter’s image – Audio visual aids, if prepared carefully and used effectively, improve the image of the presenter in the eyes of
the audience. Their respect for the speaker is
greatly increased if they feel that he has made an
appropriate use of the visuals and it has enabled them to understand his
message more clearly.
11. Making the presentation more organised – Visuals help
the presenter in organising his presentation
in a better way. He has to arrange the
visuals in the order in which he is going to show them. Thus the
information in the presentation becomes more systematically organised instead
of being haphazard or chaotic.
We can
conclude by saying that a presentation which makes a discreet use of visual
images is immensely more effective than one that is purely oral.
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