oral presentation in report writing

24 Oral Presentations

Many academic courses require students to present information to their peers and teachers in a classroom setting. This is usually in the form of a short talk, often, but not always, accompanied by visual aids such as a power point. Students often become nervous at the idea of speaking in front of a group.

This chapter is divided under five headings to establish a quick reference guide for oral presentations.

A beginner, who may have little or no experience, should read each section in full.

For the intermediate learner, who has some experience with oral presentations, review the sections you feel you need work on.

The Purpose of an Oral Presentation

Generally, oral presentation is public speaking, either individually or as a group, the aim of which is to provide information, entertain, persuade the audience, or educate. In an academic setting, oral presentations are often assessable tasks with a marking criteria. Therefore, students are being evaluated on their capacity to speak and deliver relevant information within a set timeframe. An oral presentation differs from a speech in that it usually has visual aids and may involve audience interaction; ideas are both shown and explained . A speech, on the other hand, is a formal verbal discourse addressing an audience, without visual aids and audience participation.

Types of Oral Presentations

Individual presentation.

• Breathe and remember that everyone gets nervous when speaking in public. You are in control. You’ve got this!
• Know your content. The number one way to have a smooth presentation is to know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Write it down and rehearse it until you feel relaxed and confident and do not have to rely heavily on notes while speaking.
• Eliminate ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ from your oral presentation vocabulary. Speak slowly and clearly and pause when you need to. It is not a contest to see who can race through their presentation the fastest or fit the most content within the time limit. The average person speaks at a rate of 125 words per minute. Therefore, if you are required to speak for 10 minutes, you will need to write and practice 1250 words for speaking. Ensure you time yourself and get it right.
• Ensure you meet the requirements of the marking criteria, including non-verbal communication skills. Make good eye contact with the audience; watch your posture; don’t fidget.
• Know the language requirements. Check if you are permitted to use a more casual, conversational tone and first-person pronouns, or do you need to keep a more formal, academic tone?

Group Presentation

• All of the above applies, however you are working as part of a group. So how should you approach group work?
• Firstly, if you are not assigned to a group by your lecturer/tutor, choose people based on their availability and accessibility. If you cannot meet face-to-face you may schedule online meetings.
• Get to know each other. It’s easier to work with friends than strangers.
• Also consider everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. This will involve a discussion that will often lead to task or role allocations within the group, however, everyone should be carrying an equal level of the workload.
• Some group members may be more focused on getting the script written, with a different section for each team member to say. Others may be more experienced with the presentation software and skilled in editing and refining power point slides so they are appropriate for the presentation. Use one visual aid (one set of power point slides) for the whole group. Take turns presenting information and ideas.
• Be patient and tolerant with each other’s learning style and personality. Do not judge people in your group based on their personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender, age, or cultural background.
• Rehearse as a group, more than once. Keep rehearsing until you have seamless transitions between speakers. Ensure you thank the previous speaker and introduce the one following you. If you are rehearsing online, but have to present in-person, try to schedule some face-to-face time that will allow you to physically practice using the technology and classroom space of the campus.
• For further information on working as a group see:

Working as a group – my.UQ – University of Queensland

Writing Your Presentation

Approach the oral presentation task just as you would any other assignment. Review the available topics, do some background reading and research to ensure you can talk about the topic for the appropriate length of time and in an informed manner. Break the question down as demonstrated in Chapter 17 Breaking Down an Assignment. Where it differs from writing an essay is that the information in the written speech must align with the visual aid. Therefore, with each idea, concept or new information you write, think about how this might be visually displayed through minimal text and the occasional use of images. Proceed to write your ideas in full, but consider that not all information will end up on a power point slide. After all, it is you who are doing the presenting , not the power point. Your presentation skills are being evaluated; this may include a small percentage for the actual visual aid. This is also why it is important that EVERYONE has a turn at speaking during the presentation, as each person receives their own individual grade.

Using Visual Aids

A whole chapter could be written about the visual aids alone, therefore I will simply refer to the key points as noted by my.UQ

To keep your audience engaged and help them to remember what you have to say, you may want to use visual aids, such as slides.

When designing slides for your presentation, make sure:

• any text is brief, grammatically correct and easy to read. Use dot points and space between lines, plus large font size (18-20 point).
• Resist the temptation to use dark slides with a light-coloured font; it is hard on the eyes
• if images and graphs are used to support your main points, they should be non-intrusive on the written work

Images and Graphs

• Your audience will respond better to slides that deliver information quickly – images and graphs are a good way to do this. However, they are not always appropriate or necessary.

When choosing images, it’s important to find images that:

• support your presentation and aren’t just decorative
• are high quality, however, using large HD picture files can make the power point file too large overall for submission via Turnitin
• you have permission to use (Creative Commons license, royalty-free, own images, or purchased)
• suggested sites for free-to-use images: Openclipart – Clipping Culture ; Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash ; Pxfuel – Royalty free stock photos free download ; When we share, everyone wins – Creative Commons

This is a general guide. The specific requirements for your course may be different. Make sure you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you’re unsure how to meet them.

Using Visual Aids Effectively

Too often, students make an impressive power point though do not understand how to use it effectively to enhance their presentation.

• Rehearse with the power point.
• Keep the slides synchronized with your presentation; change them at the appropriate time.
• Refer to the information on the slides. Point out details; comment on images; note facts such as data.
• Don’t let the power point just be something happening in the background while you speak.
• Write notes in your script to indicate when to change slides or which slide number the information applies to.
• Pace yourself so you are not spending a disproportionate amount of time on slides at the beginning of the presentation and racing through them at the end.
• Practice, practice, practice.

Nonverbal Communication

It is clear by the name that nonverbal communication are the ways that we communicate without speaking. Many people are already aware of this, however here are a few tips that relate specifically to oral presentations.

Being confident and looking confident are two different things. Fake it until you make it.

• Avoid slouching or leaning – standing up straight instantly gives you an air of confidence.
• Move! When you’re glued to one spot as a presenter, you’re not perceived as either confident or dynamic. Use the available space effectively, though do not exaggerate your natural movements so you look ridiculous.
• If you’re someone who “speaks with their hands”, resist the urge to constantly wave them around. They detract from your message. Occasional gestures are fine.
• Be animated, but don’t fidget. Ask someone to watch you rehearse and identify if you have any nervous, repetitive habits you may be unaware of, for example, constantly touching or ‘finger-combing’ your hair, rubbing your face.
• Avoid ‘voice fidgets’ also. If you needs to cough or clear your throat, do so once then take a drink of water.
• Avoid distractions. No phone turned on. Water available but off to one side.
• Keep your distance. Don’t hover over front-row audience members; this can be intimidating.
• Have a cheerful demeaner. You do not need to grin like a Cheshire cat throughout the presentation, yet your facial expression should be relaxed and welcoming.
• Maintain an engaging TONE in your voice. Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying that is putting your audience to sleep, it’s your monotonous tone. Vary your tone and pace.
• Don’t read your presentation – PRESENT it! Internalize your script so you can speak with confidence and only occasionally refer to your notes if needed.
• Lastly, make good eye contact with your audience members so they know you are talking with them, not at them. You’re having a conversation. Watch the link below for some great speaking tips, including eye contact.

Below is a video of some great tips about public speaking from Amy Wolff at TEDx Portland [1]

• Wolff. A. [The Oregonion]. (2016, April 9). 5 public speaking tips from TEDxPortland speaker coach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNOXZumCXNM&ab_channel=TheOregonian ↵

communication of thought by word

Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

In the social and behavioral sciences, an oral presentation assignment involves an individual student or group of students verbally addressing an audience on a specific research-based topic, often utilizing slides to help audience members understand and retain what they both see and hear. The purpose is to inform, report, and explain the significance of research findings, and your critical analysis of those findings, within a specific period of time, often in the form of a reasoned and persuasive argument. Oral presentations are assigned to assess a student’s ability to organize and communicate relevant information  effectively to a particular audience. Giving an oral presentation is considered an important learning skill because the ability to speak persuasively in front of an audience is transferable to most professional workplace settings.

Oral Presentations. Learning Co-Op. University of Wollongong, Australia; Oral Presentations. Undergraduate Research Office, Michigan State University; Oral Presentations. Presentations Research Guide, East Carolina University Libraries; Tsang, Art. “Enhancing Learners’ Awareness of Oral Presentation (Delivery) Skills in the Context of Self-regulated Learning.” Active Learning in Higher Education 21 (2020): 39-50.

Preparing for Your Oral Presentation

In some classes, writing the research paper is only part of what is required in reporting the results your work. Your professor may also require you to give an oral presentation about your study. Here are some things to think about before you are scheduled to give a presentation.

1.  What should I say?

If your professor hasn't explicitly stated what the content of your presentation should focus on, think about what you want to achieve and what you consider to be the most important things that members of the audience should know about your research. Think about the following: Do I want to inform my audience, inspire them to think about my research, or convince them of a particular point of view? These questions will help frame how to approach your presentation topic.

2.  Oral communication is different from written communication

Your audience has just one chance to hear your talk; they can't "re-read" your words if they get confused. Focus on being clear, particularly if the audience can't ask questions during the talk. There are two well-known ways to communicate your points effectively, often applied in combination. The first is the K.I.S.S. method [Keep It Simple Stupid]. Focus your presentation on getting two to three key points across. The second approach is to repeat key insights: tell them what you're going to tell them [forecast], tell them [explain], and then tell them what you just told them [summarize].

3.  Think about your audience

Yes, you want to demonstrate to your professor that you have conducted a good study. But professors often ask students to give an oral presentation to practice the art of communicating and to learn to speak clearly and audibly about yourself and your research. Questions to think about include: What background knowledge do they have about my topic? Does the audience have any particular interests? How am I going to involve them in my presentation?

4.  Create effective notes

If you don't have notes to refer to as you speak, you run the risk of forgetting something important. Also, having no notes increases the chance you'll lose your train of thought and begin relying on reading from the presentation slides. Think about the best ways to create notes that can be easily referred to as you speak. This is important! Nothing is more distracting to an audience than the speaker fumbling around with notes as they try to speak. It gives the impression of being disorganized and unprepared.

NOTE:   A good strategy is to have a page of notes for each slide so that the act of referring to a new page helps remind you to move to the next slide. This also creates a natural pause that allows your audience to contemplate what you just presented.

Strategies for creating effective notes for yourself include the following:

• Choose a large, readable font [at least 18 point in Ariel ]; avoid using fancy text fonts or cursive text.
• Use bold text, underlining, or different-colored text to highlight elements of your speech that you want to emphasize. Don't over do it, though. Only highlight the most important elements of your presentation.
• Leave adequate space on your notes to jot down additional thoughts or observations before and during your presentation. This is also helpful when writing down your thoughts in response to a question or to remember a multi-part question [remember to have a pen with you when you give your presentation].
• Place a cue in the text of your notes to indicate when to move to the next slide, to click on a link, or to take some other action, such as, linking to a video. If appropriate, include a cue in your notes if there is a point during your presentation when you want the audience to refer to a handout.
• Spell out challenging words phonetically and practice saying them ahead of time. This is particularly important for accurately pronouncing people’s names, technical or scientific terminology, words in a foreign language, or any unfamiliar words.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Kelly, Christine. Mastering the Art of Presenting. Inside Higher Education Career Advice; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Organizing the Content

In the process of organizing the content of your presentation, begin by thinking about what you want to achieve and how are you going to involve your audience in the presentation.

• Brainstorm your topic and write a rough outline. Don’t get carried away—remember you have a limited amount of time for your presentation.
• Organize your material and draft what you want to say [see below].
• Summarize your draft into key points to write on your presentation slides and/or note cards and/or handout.
• Prepare your visual aids.
• Rehearse your presentation and practice getting the presentation completed within the time limit given by your professor. Ask a friend to listen and time you.

GENERAL OUTLINE

I.  Introduction [may be written last]

• Capture your listeners’ attention . Begin with a question, an amusing story, a provocative statement, a personal story, or anything that will engage your audience and make them think. For example, "As a first-gen student, my hardest adjustment to college was the amount of papers I had to write...."
• State your purpose . For example, "I’m going to talk about..."; "This morning I want to explain…."
• Present an outline of your talk . For example, “I will concentrate on the following points: First of all…Then…This will lead to…And finally…"

II.  The Body

• Present your main points one by one in a logical order .
• Pause at the end of each point . Give people time to take notes, or time to think about what you are saying.
• Make it clear when you move to another point . For example, “The next point is that...”; “Of course, we must not forget that...”; “However, it's important to realize that....”
• Use clear examples to illustrate your points and/or key findings .
• If appropriate, consider using visual aids to make your presentation more interesting [e.g., a map, chart, picture, link to a video, etc.].

III.  The Conclusion

• Leave your audience with a clear summary of everything that you have covered.
• Summarize the main points again . For example, use phrases like: "So, in conclusion..."; "To recap the main issues...," "In summary, it is important to realize...."
• Restate the purpose of your talk, and say that you have achieved your aim : "My intention was ..., and it should now be clear that...."
• Don't let the talk just fizzle out . Make it obvious that you have reached the end of the presentation.
• Thank the audience, and invite questions : "Thank you. Are there any questions?"

NOTE: When asking your audience if anyone has any questions, give people time to contemplate what you have said and to formulate a question. It may seem like an awkward pause to wait ten seconds or so for someone to raise their hand, but it's frustrating to have a question come to mind but be cutoff because the presenter rushed to end the talk.

ANOTHER NOTE: If your last slide includes any contact information or other important information, leave it up long enough to ensure audience members have time to write the information down. Nothing is more frustrating to an audience member than wanting to jot something down, but the presenter closes the slides immediately after finishing.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Delivering Your Presentation

When delivering your presentation, keep in mind the following points to help you remain focused and ensure that everything goes as planned.

Pay Attention to Language!

• Keep it simple . The aim is to communicate, not to show off your vocabulary. Using complex words or phrases increases the chance of stumbling over a word and losing your train of thought.
• Emphasize the key points . Make sure people realize which are the key points of your study. Repeat them using different phrasing to help the audience remember them.
• Check the pronunciation of difficult, unusual, or foreign words beforehand . Keep it simple, but if you have to use unfamiliar words, write them out phonetically in your notes and practice saying them. This is particularly important when pronouncing proper names. Give the definition of words that are unusual or are being used in a particular context [e.g., "By using the term affective response, I am referring to..."].

Use Your Voice to Communicate Clearly

• Speak loud enough for everyone in the room to hear you . Projecting your voice may feel uncomfortably loud at first, but if people can't hear you, they won't try to listen. However, moderate your voice if you are talking in front of a microphone.
• Speak slowly and clearly . Don’t rush! Speaking fast makes it harder for people to understand you and signals being nervous.
• Avoid the use of "fillers." Linguists refer to utterances such as um, ah, you know, and like as fillers. They occur most often during transitions from one idea to another and, if expressed too much, are distracting to an audience. The better you know your presentation, the better you can control these verbal tics.
• Vary your voice quality . If you always use the same volume and pitch [for example, all loud, or all soft, or in a monotone] during your presentation, your audience will stop listening. Use a higher pitch and volume in your voice when you begin a new point or when emphasizing the transition to a new point.
• Speakers with accents need to slow down [so do most others]. Non-native speakers often speak English faster than we slow-mouthed native speakers, usually because most non-English languages flow more quickly than English. Slowing down helps the audience to comprehend what you are saying.
• Slow down for key points . These are also moments in your presentation to consider using body language, such as hand gestures or leaving the podium to point to a slide, to help emphasize key points.
• Use pauses . Don't be afraid of short periods of silence. They give you a chance to gather your thoughts, and your audience an opportunity to think about what you've just said.

Also Use Your Body Language to Communicate!

• Stand straight and comfortably . Do not slouch or shuffle about. If you appear bored or uninterested in what your talking about, the audience will emulate this as well. Wear something comfortable. This is not the time to wear an itchy wool sweater or new high heel shoes for the first time.
• Hold your head up . Look around and make eye contact with people in the audience [or at least pretend to]. Do not just look at your professor or your notes the whole time! Looking up at your your audience brings them into the conversation. If you don't include the audience, they won't listen to you.
• When you are talking to your friends, you naturally use your hands, your facial expression, and your body to add to your communication . Do it in your presentation as well. It will make things far more interesting for the audience.
• Don't turn your back on the audience and don't fidget! Neither moving around nor standing still is wrong. Practice either to make yourself comfortable. Even when pointing to a slide, don't turn your back; stand at the side and turn your head towards the audience as you speak.
• Keep your hands out of your pocket . This is a natural habit when speaking. One hand in your pocket gives the impression of being relaxed, but both hands in pockets looks too casual and should be avoided.

Interact with the Audience

• Be aware of how your audience is reacting to your presentation . Are they interested or bored? If they look confused, stop and ask them [e.g., "Is anything I've covered so far unclear?"]. Stop and explain a point again if needed.
• Check after highlighting key points to ask if the audience is still with you . "Does that make sense?"; "Is that clear?" Don't do this often during the presentation but, if the audience looks disengaged, interrupting your talk to ask a quick question can re-focus their attention even if no one answers.
• Do not apologize for anything . If you believe something will be hard to read or understand, don't use it. If you apologize for feeling awkward and nervous, you'll only succeed in drawing attention to the fact you are feeling awkward and nervous and your audience will begin looking for this, rather than focusing on what you are saying.
• Be open to questions . If someone asks a question in the middle of your talk, answer it. If it disrupts your train of thought momentarily, that's ok because your audience will understand. Questions show that the audience is listening with interest and, therefore, should not be regarded as an attack on you, but as a collaborative search for deeper understanding. However, don't engage in an extended conversation with an audience member or the rest of the audience will begin to feel left out. If an audience member persists, kindly tell them that the issue can be addressed after you've completed the rest of your presentation and note to them that their issue may be addressed later in your presentation [it may not be, but at least saying so allows you to move on].
• Be ready to get the discussion going after your presentation . Professors often want a brief discussion to take place after a presentation. Just in case nobody has anything to say or no one asks any questions, be prepared to ask your audience some provocative questions or bring up key issues for discussion.

Amirian, Seyed Mohammad Reza and Elaheh Tavakoli. “Academic Oral Presentation Self-Efficacy: A Cross-Sectional Interdisciplinary Comparative Study.” Higher Education Research and Development 35 (December 2016): 1095-1110; Balistreri, William F. “Giving an Effective Presentation.” Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 35 (July 2002): 1-4; Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Enfield, N. J. How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation . New York: Basic Books, 2017; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Speaking Tip

Your First Words are Your Most Important Words!

Your introduction should begin with something that grabs the attention of your audience, such as, an interesting statistic, a brief narrative or story, or a bold assertion, and then clearly tell the audience in a well-crafted sentence what you plan to accomplish in your presentation. Your introductory statement should be constructed so as to invite the audience to pay close attention to your message and to give the audience a clear sense of the direction in which you are about to take them.

Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015.

Another Speaking Tip

Talk to Your Audience, Don't Read to Them!

A presentation is not the same as reading a prepared speech or essay. If you read your presentation as if it were an essay, your audience will probably understand very little about what you say and will lose their concentration quickly. Use notes, cue cards, or presentation slides as prompts that highlight key points, and speak to your audience . Include everyone by looking at them and maintaining regular eye-contact [but don't stare or glare at people]. Limit reading text to quotes or to specific points you want to emphasize.

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

• Related content
• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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Oral Presentations Purpose

An Oral Research Presentation is meant to showcase your research findings. A successful oral research presentation should: communicate the importance of your research; clearly state your findings and the analysis of those findings; prompt discussion between researcher and audience.  Below you will find information on how to create and give a successful oral presentation.  

Creating an Effective Presentation

Who has a harder job the speaker? Or, the audience?

Most people think speaker has the hardest job during an oral presentation, because they are having to stand up in a room full of people and give a presentation. However, if the speaker is not engaging and if the material is way outside of the audiences knowledge level, the audience can have a difficult job as well. Below you will find some tips on how to be an effective presenter and how to engage with your audience.

Organization of a Presentation  

Introduction/Beginning

How are you going to begin?  How are you going to get the attention of your audience? You need to take the time and think about how you are going to get started!

Here are some ways you could start:

• Ask the audience a question
• make a statement
• show them something

No matter how you start your presentation it needs to relate to your research and capture the audiences attention.  

Preview what you are going to discuss .  Audiences do not like to be manipulated or tricked. Tell the audience exactly what you are going to discuss, this will help them follow along.  *Do not say you are going to cover three points and then try to cover 8 points.

At the end of your introduction, the audience should feel like they know exactly what you are going to  discuss and exactly how you are going to get there.  

Body/Middle

Conclusion/End

Delivery and Communication

Eye Contact

Making eye contact is a great way to engage with your audience.  Eye contact should be no longer than 2-3 seconds per person.  Eye contact for much longer than that can begin to make the audience member feel uncomfortable.

Smiling lets attendees know you are happy to be there and that you are excited to talk with them about your project.

We all know that body language says a lot, so here are some things you should remember when giving your presentation.

• Stand with both feet on the floor, not with one foot crossed over the other. 
• Do not stand with your hands in your pockets, or with your arms crossed.
• Stand tall with confidence and own your space (remember you are the expert).  

Abbreviated Notes

Having a written set of notes or key points that you want to address can help prevent you from reading the poster. 

Speak Clearly

Sometimes when we get nervous we begin to talk fast and blur our words.  It is important that you make sure every word is distinct and clear. A great way to practice your speech is to say tongue twisters. 

Ten tiny tots tottered toward the shore

Literally literary. Literally literary.  Literally literary.

Sally soon saw that she should sew some sheets.

Avoid Fillers

Occasionally we pick up fillers that we are not aware of, such as um, like, well, etc. One way to get rid of fillers is to have a friend listen to your speech and every time you say a "filler" have that friend tap you on the arm or say your name.  This will bring the filler to light, then you can practice avoiding that filler.

Manage Anxiety

Many people get nervous when they are about to speak to a crowd of people.  Below are ways that you can manage your anxiety levels. 

• Practice, Practice, Practice - the more prepared you are the less nervous you will be.
• Recognize that anxiety is just a big shot of adrenalin.
• Take deep breaths before your presentation to calm you down. 

Components of an Oral Research Presentation

Introduction

The introduction section of your oral presentation should consist of 3 main parts.  

Part 1: Existing facts

In order to give audience members the "full picture", you first need to provide them with information about past research.  What facts already exist? What is already known about your research area?

Part 2: Shortcomings

Once you have highlighted past research and existing facts. You now need to address what is left to be known, or what shortcomings exist within the current information.  This should set the groundwork for your experiment.  Keep in mind, how does your research fill these gaps or help address these questions? 

Part 3: Purpose or Hypothesis

After you have addressed past/current research and have identified shortcomings/gaps, it is now time to address your research.  During this portion of the introduction you need to tell viewers why you are conducting your research experiement/study, and what you hope to accomplish by doing so. 

In this section you should share with your audience how you went about collecting and analyzing your data

Should include:

• Participants: Who or what was in the study?
• Materials/ measurements: what did you measure?
• Procedures: How did you do the study?
• Data-analysis: What analysis were conducted? 

This section contains FACTS – with no opinion, commentary or interpretation. Graphs, charts and images can be used to display data in a clear and organized way.  

Keep in mind when making figures:

• Make sure axis, treatments, and data sets are clearly labeled
• Strive for simplicity, especially in figure titles. 
• Know when to use what kind of graph
• Be careful with colors.

Interpretation and commentary takes place here. This section should give a clear summary of your findings. 

You should:

• Address the positive and negative aspects of you research
• Discuss how and if your research question was answered. 
• Highlight the novel and important findings
• Speculate on what could be occurring in your system 

Future Research

• State your goals
• Include information about why you believe research should go in the direction you are proposing
• Discuss briefly how you plan to implement the research goals, if you chose to do so.  

Why include References?

• It allows viewers to locate the material that you used, and can help viewers expand their knowledge of your research topic.  
• Indicates that you have conducted a thorough review of the literature and conducted your research from an informed perspective.
• Guards you against intellectual theft.  Ideas are considered intellectual property failure to cite someone's ideas can have serious consequences. 

Acknowledgements

This section is used to thank the people, programs and funding agencies that allowed you to perform your research.

Questions 

Allow for about 2-3 minutes at the end of your presentation for questions. 

It is important to be prepared. 

• Know why you conducted the study
• Be prepared to answer questions about why you chose a specific methodology

If you DO NOT know the answer to a question

Visual Aids

PowerPoints and other visual aids can be used to support what you are presenting about.

Power Point Slides and other visual aids can help support your presentation, however there are some things you should consider: 

• Do not overdo it . One big mistake that presenters make is they have  a slide for every single item they want to say. One way you can avoid this is by writing your presentation in Word first, instead of making a Power Point Presentation. By doing this you can type exactly what you want to say, and once your presentation is complete, you can create Power Point slides that help support your presentation. ​

Formula for number of visual aids : Length of presentation divided by 2 plus 1

example: 12 minute presentation should have no more than 7 slides.

• Does it add interest? 
• Does it prove? 
• Does it clarify?
• Do not read the text . Most people can read, and if they have the option of reading material themselves versus listen to you read it, they are going to read it themselves and then your voice becomes an annoyance. Also, when you are reading the text you are probably not engaging with the audience. 
• No more than 4-6 lines on a slide and no more than 4-6 words in a line.
• People should be able to read your slide in 6 seconds.
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14: Oral Presentations

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Chapter Objectives

• Create oral presentation materials that reflect standards of effective presentations.
• Apply the standards of effective presentation to Technical Writing.
• Demonstrate formatting and designing of presentations.
• Evaluate presentations for effectiveness.

A common assignment in technical writing courses—not to mention in the workplace—is to prepare and deliver an oral presentation, a task most of us would be happy to avoid. However, while employers look for coursework and experience in preparing written documents, they also look for experience in oral presentations as well.

Oral presentations will be prepared differently face-to-face than in an online environment. You would see many presenters use flip charts, PowerPoint, and other visuals for face-to-face presentations. If you are presenting online, oral reports can be sent in as "scripts," or audio versions can be transmitted live or recorded. You might also use PowerPoint and Prezi presentations as well.

Most people would rather have root canal surgery without Novocaine than stand up in front of a group and speak. It truly is one of the great stressors. But with some help from the resources that follow, you can be a champion presenter. Learning how to have effective presentations can help you close a big deal or explain information to your colleagues at work.

Topics and Situations for the Oral Presentation

For the oral report in a technical writing course, imagine that you are formally handing over your final written report to the people with whom you set up the hypothetical contract or agreement. For example, imagine that you had contracted with a software company to write its user guide. Once you have completed it, you have a meeting with the chief officers to formally deliver the guide. You spend some time orienting them to the guide, showing them how it is organized and written, and discussing some of its highlights. Your goal is to get them acquainted with the guide and to prompt them for any concerns or questions.

The first step is to figure out a topic. It is important to remember what you did in the writing process and the same steps apply here. Start with brainstorming some possibilities on what you want to present:

• Informative purpose: An oral report can be primarily informative. For example, as a member of a committee involved in a project to relocate the plant, your job might be to give an oral report on the condition of the building and grounds at one of the sites proposed for purchase.
• Instructional purpose: An oral report can be instructional. Your task might be to train new employees to use certain equipment or to perform certain routine tasks.
• Persuasive purpose: An oral report can be persuasive. You might want to convince members of local civic organizations to support a city-wide recycling program.
• Topics: You can start by thinking of a technical subject, for example, solar panels, microprocessors, drip irrigation, or laser surgery. For your oral report, think of a subject you would be interested in talking about, but find a reason why an audience would want to hear your oral report.
• Place or situation: You can find topics for oral reports or make more detailed plans for them by thinking about the place or the situation in which your oral report might naturally be given: at meetings for your employer? at a city council meeting? at a meeting of the board of directors or high-level executives of a company? Thinking about an oral report this way makes you focus on the audience, their reasons for listening to you, and their interests and background. As in all technical writing situations, identifying and understanding your audience is of the utmost importance.

Contents and Requirements for Oral Presentations

Once you have picked a topic for your oral presentation, it is time to organize your thoughts. The focus for your oral presentation is clear, understandable presentation; well-organized, well-planned, well-timed discussion.

When you give your oral presentation, use the following as a requirements list, as a way of focusing your preparations:

• Situation: Plan to explain the situation of your oral report and who you are. Make sure that there is a clean break between this brief explanation and the beginning of your actual oral report.
• Indicate the purpose of your oral report.
• give an overview of its contents.
• find some way to interest the audience.
• Visuals: Use at least one visual—preferably slides using presentation software (such as Powerpoint, Keynote, and Prezi). Flip charts and objects for display are good, but avoid scribbling stuff on the chalkboard or whiteboard or relying strictly on handouts. Make sure you discuss key elements of your visuals. Don't just throw them up there and ignore them. Point out things about them; explain them to the audience.
• Explanation: Plan to explain any technical aspect of your topic clearly and understandably. Don't race through complex, technical stuff—slow down and explain it carefully so that your audience understands it.
• Transitions: Use "verbal headings"—by now, you've gotten used to using headings in your written work. There is a corollary in oral reports. With these, you give your audience a very clear signal you are moving from one topic or part of your talk to the next. Your presentation visual can signal your headings.
• Planning: Plan your presentation in advance and practice it so that it is organized. Make sure that your audience knows what you are talking about and why, which part of the talk you are in, and what is coming next. Overviews and verbal headings greatly contribute to this sense of organization.
• summarize (go back over high points of what you've discussed).
• conclude (state some logical conclusion based on what you have presented).
• provide some last thought (end with some final interesting point but general enough not to require elaboration).
• or some combination of the three.
• Questions: And certainly, you'll want to prompt the audience for questions and concerns.

The sample chart below can help you with your organization and brainstorming.

Figure: Diagram of the 7 minute oral presentation. (CCBY 2019; Tiffani Reardon)

Preparing for the Oral Presentation

Pick the method of preparing for the talk that best suits your comfort level with public speaking and with your topic. However, plan to do ample preparation and rehearsal—some people assume that they can just jump up there and ad lib for so many minutes and be relaxed and informal. It does not often work that way—drawing a mental blank is the more common experience. A well delivered presentation is the result of a lot of work and a lot of practice.

Here are the obvious possibilities for preparation and delivery:

• Write a script, practice it; keep it around for quick-reference during your talk.
• Set up an outline of your talk; practice with it, bring it for reference.
• Set up cue cards, practice with them, and use them during your talk.
• Write a script and read from it.

A good presentation is one that is clear, understandable, well-planned, organized, and on target with your purpose and audience.

It does not matter which method you use to prepare for the talk, but you want to make sure that you know your material. The head-down style of reading your report directly from a script will not work. There is little or no eye contact or interaction with the audience. The delivery tends to be toward a dull, boring monotone that either puts listeners off or is hard to understand. And, most of us cannot stand to have reports read to us!

For many reasons, most people get nervous when they have to give oral presentations. Being well prepared is your best defense against the nerves. The nerves will wear off someday, the more oral presenting you do. In the meantime, breathe deeply and enjoy.

Visuals for Oral Presentations

There are various types of presentation formats you can use:

• Presentation software slides: Projecting images ("slides") using software such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, and Prezi, to name a few. One common problem with the construction of these slides is cramming too much information on individual slides.
• Poster board-size charts: Another possibility is to get some poster boards and draw and letter what you want your audience to see. Of course, it's not easy making charts look neat and professional.
• Handouts: You can run off copies of what you want your audience to see and hand them out before or during your talk. This option is even less effective than the first two because you cannot point to what you want your audience to see and because handouts distract the audience’s attention away from you. Still, for certain visual needs, handouts are the only choice. Keep in mind that if you are not well prepared, the handouts become a place for your distracted audience to doodle.
• Objects: If you need to demonstrate certain procedures, you may need to bring in actual physical objects. Rehearse what you are going to do with these objects; sometimes they can take up a lot more time than you expect.
• Zoom, Teams, Google Hangouts (conference style software): We are seeing more and more companies using these software to conduct business meetings. So, people are conducting virtual meetings and presenting. So learning how to use this software to present your presentations is very important.

Take some time to make your visuals look sharp and professional—do your best to ensure that they are legible to the entire audience.

As for the content of your visuals, consider these ideas:

• Drawing or diagram of key objects: If you describe or refer to any objects during your talk, try to get visuals of them, so that you can point to different components or features.
• Tables, charts, graphs: If you discuss statistical data, present it in some form or table, chart, or graph. Many members of your audience may be less comfortable "hearing" such data as opposed to seeing it.
• Outline of your talk, report, or both: If you are at a loss for visuals to use in your oral presentation, or if your presentation is complex, have an outline of it that you can show at various points during your talk.
• Key terms and definitions: A good idea for visuals (especially when you cannot think of any others) is to set up a two-column list of key terms you use during your oral presentation with their definitions in the second column.
• Key concepts or points: Similarly, you can list your key points and show them in visuals. (Outlines, key terms, and main points are all good, legitimate ways of incorporating visuals into oral presentations when you cannot think of any others.)

During your actual oral report, make sure to discuss your visuals, refer to them, guide your audience through the key points in your visuals. It is a big problem just to throw a visual up on the screen and never even refer to it.

As you prepare your visuals, look at resources that will help you. There are many rules for using PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, and Prezi down to the font size and how many words to put on a single slide, but you will have to choose the style that best suits your subject and your presentation style.

You may also have heard about the presentation skills of Steve Jobs. The video that follows is the introduction of the I-Phone...and as you watch, take notes on how Jobs sets up his talk and his visuals. Observe how he connects with the audience...and then see if you can work some of his strategies into your own presentation skills. This is a long video...you don't need to watch it all, but do take enough time to form some good impressions.

Steve Jobs iPhone Presentation

Format and Design

Presentation software allows you to take an oral presentation to the next level—engaging your audience verbally and visually as well as aurally. What’s particularly powerful about using presentation software and other visual aids is the ability to use imagery to bridge cultural and language gaps and arrive at a shared understanding of the issue/opportunity at hand.

Using multimedia—images, photos and video and animation—that supports your point also provides repetition and can increase retention.

Common Presentation Tools

There are various formats you can use to create effective presentations. Depending on your operating system there is Keynote for Mac computers, PowerPoint is a Microsoft product, and there are online options such as Prezi. These applications are easy to use and can provide step by step instructions.

Various Types of Presentation tools to consider:

Creating Effective Presentations

Presentations are quite common in both academic and professional settings, and, because they are such an important part of how you’ll likely present your ideas and information to an audience, it’s helpful to have some basic information on how to create an effective presentation.

The basic purpose of a presentation is to give you a way to present key ideas to an audience with visual support. Your presentation shouldn’t be full of text. It is meant to provide you with speaking points, and detailed notes should be kept from your audience. You want to keep your slides clear, clean, short, focused, and you want to keep your audience from using the expression that we sometimes hear in reference to long, boring presentations, “death by PowerPoint.”

When you start to think about the layout of your presentation make sure to have an outline of how you want your presentation to flow. This will help you make sure you cover all your points. Make sure that your presentation is spaced out well and your content does not look cluttered on the slide. Remember that you want the color to be suitable for all audiences. Some people are color blind and cannot see certain colors. So make sure your colors go well together.

Designing the Presentation

When creating a presentation make sure it is visually appealing and easy to read for your audience. You want to have less text and use more bullet points. You want to also have visuals to highlight your topic. The examples below will help you create a slide that highlights bullet points, illustrated points, and speaker props.

Speaker Props

This type of presentation is random pictures that will flash across your screen. You have to be careful when using it as it could be distracting for the audience and some people cannot handle flashes like that. The video below is an example of this type of presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RrpajcAgR1E

Fonts and Size for Your Presentation

When you are creating your presentation make sure to pick a font and size that is easy for your audience to read. Your audience needs to be able to read the information being projected in the room. Remember you could be in a conference room or an auditorium. Make sure you are using the same font throughout your presentation and the font is appropriate for your topic and audience. It can be distracting if you have various fonts throughout the presentation.

• Use a font that is easy to read.
• Make sure the font and the background are compatible.
• Make sure your title font is bigger than the content and stands out.
• The common size is 24 font.
• Bold important information.

Aesthetically Pleasing

For our purposes, aesthetics refers to the beauty or good taste of a presentation aid. Earlier we mentioned the universal principles of good design: unity, emphasis or focal point, scale and proportion, balance, and rhythm. Because of wide differences in taste, not everyone will agree on what is aesthetically pleasing, and you may be someone who does not think of yourself as having much artistic talent. Still, if you keep these principles in mind, they will help you to create attractive, professional-looking visuals.

The other aesthetic principle to keep in mind is that your presentation aids are intended to support your speech, not the other way around. The decisions you make in designing your visuals should be dictated by the content of your speech. If you use color, use it for a clear reason. If you use a border, keep it simple. Whatever you do, make certain that your presentation aids will be perceived as carefully planned and executed elements of your speech.

How to Choose Good Color

Color is very important and can definitely make a strong impact on an audience. However, don’t go overboard or decide to use unappealing combinations of color. For example, you should never use a light font color (like yellow) on a solid white background because it’s hard for the eye to read. You should also realize that while colors may be rich and vibrant on your computer screen at home, they may be distorted by a different monitor. While we definitely are in favor of experimenting with various color schemes, always check your presentation out on multiple computers to see if the slide color is being distorted in a way that makes it hard to read.

Visual and Audio Effects

Everyone who has had an opportunity to experiment with PowerPoint, Keynote, and Prezi knows that animation in transitions between slides or even on a single slide can be fun, but often people do not realize that too much movement can actually distract audience members. While all presentation software packages offer you very cool slide movements and other bells and whistles, they are not always very helpful for your presentation. If you’re going to utilize slide transitions or word animation, stick to only three or four different types of transitions in your whole presentation. Furthermore, do not have more than one type of movement on a given slide. If you’re going to have all your text come from the right side of the screen in a bulleted list, make sure that all the items on the bulleted list come from the right side of the screen.

Good writers make conscious choices. They understand their purpose and audience. Every decision they make on the page, from organizing an essay to choosing a word with just the right connotations, is made with their purpose and audience in mind.

The same principle applies to visual communication. As a presenter, you choose the following:

• When to show images or video for maximum impact;
• Which images will best produce the effect you want;
• When to present information using a table, chart, or other graphic;
• How much text to include in slides or informational graphics; and
• How to organize graphics so they present information clearly.

Your goal is to use visual media to support and enhance your presentation. At the same time, you must make sure these media do not distract your audience or interfere with getting your point across. Your ideas, not your visuals, should be the focus.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating an effective presentation:

• Remember to avoid too much text. You should keep your text brief and include talking points only. Detailed notes can be inserted into the notes section (or you can use some other form of notes as you present), but only you should see those notes, unless a professor asks to see your notes to evaluate your presentation as an assignment.
• Be consistent and clear with your font choices. Helvetica is a nice font for presentations. Make sure your font is large enough that an audience in a room would be able to see your text, even if audience members are sitting in the back of the room.
• Be careful with your color choices for text and background. You want to make sure your audience can read your text easily. Black on white text is easiest to read but is also boring for a presentation. Still, when you add color, just be sure you are adding color that works and doesn’t distract.
• Add images. Text on slides for every slide is boring. Add appropriate images to your slides. Relevant charts and graphs are excellent, as are pictures that will connect to your content. Think about moments where an image can more easily convey information or a message. A powerful image on a slide with no accompanying text can be a powerful way to capture your audience’s attention.
• Make sure your main points are clear. Remember to connect your ideas well and provide background information and transitions when necessary.
• Keep your audience in mind. Your audience will affect the overall tone and appearance of your presentation. Sometimes, humor can be appropriate. Other times, a more serious tone may be necessary. Just as you evaluate your situation any time you write a paper, you should evaluate your situation for creating a presentation.

Delivering Oral Presentations

When you give an oral report, focus on common problem areas such as these:

• Timing: Make sure you keep within the time limit. Finishing more than a minute under the time limit is also a problem. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse until you get the timing just right.
• Volume: Obviously, you must be sure to speak loud enough so that all of your audience can hear you. You might find some way to practice speaking a little louder in the days before the oral presentation.
• Pacing, speed: Sometimes, oral presenters who are nervous talk too fast. All that adrenaline causes them to speed through their talk, making it hard for the audience to follow. In general, it helps listeners understand you better if you speak a bit more slowly and deliberately than you do in normal conversation. Slow down, take it easy, be clear...and breathe.
• Gestures and posture: Watch out for nervous hands flying all over the place. This too can be distracting—and a bit comical. At the same time, do not turn yourself into a mannequin. Plan to keep your hands clasped together or holding onto the podium and only occasionally making some gesture. Definitely keep your hands out of your pockets or waistband. As for posture, avoid slouching at the podium or leaning against the wall. Stand up straight, and keep your head up.
• Verbal crutches: Watch out for too much "uh," "you know," "okay" and other kinds of nervous verbal habits. Instead of saying "uh" or "you know" every three seconds, just do not say anything at all. In the days before your oral presentation, practice speaking without these verbal crutches. The silence that replaces them is not a bad thing—it gives listeners time to process what you are saying.
• Practice, Practice, Practice : It is vital to practice using the technology. Nothing is worse than watching a speaker stand up and not know how to turn on the computer, access the software, or launch his or her presentation. When you use technology, audiences can quickly see if you know what you are doing, so don’t give them the opportunity to devalue your credibility because you can’t even get the show going.
• Always Have a Backup Plan : Unfortunately, things often go wrong. One of the parts of being a professional is keeping the speech moving in spite of unexpected problems. Decide in advance what you will do if things break down or disappear right when you need them. If you take this responsibility seriously and check the room where you will be presenting early, you will have time to adapt.
• Face Your Audience : Maintaining eye contact may not be as simple as it sounds. The trick is to focus on one person at a time. Zero in on one person, make eye contact, and maintain it just long enough to establish a connection. (A few seconds will suffice.) Then move on. This way, you connect with your audience, one person at a time. Pay attention to your facial expressions as well. If you have thought about how you want to convey emotion during different parts of your presentation, you are probably already monitoring your facial expressions as you rehearse. Be aware that the pressure of presenting can make your expression serious or tense without your realizing it.

If you are speaking to a very large group, it may be difficult to make eye contact with each individual. Instead, focus on a smaller group of persons or one row of people at time. Look in their direction for a few seconds and then shift your gaze to another small group in the room.

This chapter highlighted how to plan, create, and present oral presentations. There are so many presentation solutions out there that you need to find one that works with your computer and you feel comfortable using. When you create a PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slide, or Keynote presentation, be sure to consider the principles discussed.

GENERAL PRESENTATION TIPS

When you create a PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slide, or Keynote presentation, be sure to consider the principles discussed. You now know how to:

• Brainstorm your topic.
• Plan and prepare your presentation.
• Create content for an effective presentation.
• Choose a presentation medium that fits your audience.
• Use a font and size that is appropriate.
• Position objects and content appropriately.
• Avoid distracting colors and text and make sure colors are in contrast with each other.
• Select backgrounds that are easy to read and see - remember some people are color blind.
• Pick effects and visuals that are stimulating and pleasing to the eye.

This work "Oral Presentations" is a derivative of "ENGL210: Technical Writing - Tips for Creating an Effective Presentation” , " Oral Presentations” by David McMurrey and Cassandra Race - Open Technical Communication , Authored by : Excelsior Online Reading Lab , Presentations and Other Visual Aids. Authored by: Nina Burokas. Provided by: Lumen Learning, and VARK Illustration. Provided by: Lumen Learning. "Oral Presentations" is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Lise-Pauline Barnett.

Chapter 12: Oral Reports

Katrina Peterson

Chapter Synopsis

This chapter shares basic principles for the preparation and delivery of oral reports. It gives an overview of expected structural conventions: how to set up an introduction, body, and conclusion. Since presentations often include a visual component, the chapter offers guidelines for creating an effective PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote. It includes tips for developing effective slides, while acknowledging the drawbacks of presentation software. It also offers suggestions to help speakers prepare well, overcome anxiety, and consider their speaking context. The chapter concludes with thoughts on presentation delivery.

12.1 Introduction to Oral Presentations

Increasingly, employers report that they require excellent communication skills, not just in print but also in person. Your employer will likely call on you to deliver an oral report at some point in your career. Whether you are an engineer or a writer, a professional or a student, a business person or a scientist, you will need to communicate well with supervisors, colleagues, clients, and the public. For most, this includes at least an occasional formal presentation. Formal presentations in the workplace usually take one of three forms: 1) informational, 2) persuasive, or 3) instructional. Informational presentations are useful for reporting on research or giving a project update. Persuasive presentations can be used to make pitches to clients or supervisors. Instructional or how-to presentations are formatted to teach, explain, or train.  In each instance, you will have a chance to showcase your skills, often hybridizing or combining different modes of communication based on your past training. For example, a how-to presentation would connect your ability to write clear technical instructions with your ability to present well. Your goal as a speaker will differ based on context, but the best presentations share certain characteristics that you will want to consider.

In technical presentations, like most other genres of technical communication, good visual information design is essential. (See Chapter 5 on document design for additional tips and guidelines.) Visual aids are useful for increasing audience understanding of both the subject and the organization of a presentation. Presenters should remember they have an array of options for visuals, from live demonstrations and interactive activities to old fashioned white boards; however, presentation software is the most commonly used option. Of the presentation software choices, PowerPoint is widely used in the workplace and in educational settings. Other software like Prezi or Google Slides are becoming more popular and present may of the same opportunities and challenges.  As you think through your options, be aware that each choice has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, PowerPoint can be a very effective tool for students and professionals if used appropriately, but effective use of this tool is not as intuitive as one would think. The following sections will help you to structure your presentation well and to consider the pros and cons of each design choice.

12.2 Presentation Structure

A clear presentation structure is an essential aspect of speech preparation. Similar to the academic essay and other genres of writing, a speech has three parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Each of these three parts includes certain patterns or rhetorical moves that the speaker should incorporate.

When structuring your presentation, it may be helpful to first draft an outline. This method enables you to determine essential content and main points, while excluding information that is not strictly relevant to your big-picture goals. You have different options to ensure that all the essentials are included; for example, you can place your major points on slides and then illustrate with examples you have prepared. Other options include carrying notecards or an outline to the podium, depending on the setup.

As you make these decisions, always consider who you are as a speaker, or your unique speaking style and challenges. If your hands tend to shake a bit, it may be helpful to hold something to steady them, but if you are concerned about the possibility of holding multiple materials (and possibly dropping them), you can confine memory aids to a single sheet of paper. It may be wise to carry a brief outline of major points with you to offset the possibility of omitting important information. This strategy also helps to avoid losing main points in the case of a technology malfunction if you will be referencing slides.

Introduction Introductions and conclusions are points of emphasis; psychologically speaking, we tend to remember information presented first and last more clearly than information that is buried in the middle. The first words you say will also set the tone for the rest of your speech. There may not be any one best way to start a speech, but the following are some helpful guidelines that will make starting a speech much easier.

Perhaps most importantly, capture the audience’s attention as you introduce the topic. If you do not engage the audience at the outset, it will become more difficult to do so as you continue speaking. Starting a speech with “Hey everybody. I’m going to talk to you today about soccer” already sounds boring and will not engage audience members who are not soccer fans. If your audience has deemed your speech to be boring, trying to inform, persuade, or entertain them becomes exponentially more difficult. Instead, consider utilizing some of the techniques suggested below.

When selecting an opener, you want to make sure that the option you choose is appropriate and relevant to your specific audience. Different audiences will have different backgrounds and knowledge, so you should first determine whether specific information you plan on using would be appropriate for them. For example, if you are giving a speech on family units to a group of individuals over the age of 65, starting your speech with a reference to the television show Gossip Girl may not be the best idea because the audience may be unfamiliar with that show. Also choose an attention-getting device appropriate for your speech topic. Ideally, your attention-getting device should have a relevant connection to your speech.

For easy reference, here are some common devices used as speech openers:

•   An anecdote or reference to current events engages an audience with a brief account or story. Notice the emphasis here is on the word “brief.” A common mistake speakers make when telling an anecdote is to make it too long. The anecdote should be short and have a clear point. For example, consider this attention getter for a persuasive speech on frivolous lawsuits: “On January 10 of this year, Scott Anthony Gomez, Jr., and a fellow inmate escaped from a Pueblo, Colorado, jail. During their escape the duo attempted to rappel from the roof of the jail using a makeshift ladder of bed sheets. During Gomez’s attempt to scale the building, he slipped, fell forty feet, and injured his back. Gomez then filed a lawsuit against the jail for making it too easy for him to attempt an escape.” In this case, the speaker is highlighting a news event that illustrates what a frivolous lawsuit is, setting up the speech topic about a need for change in how such lawsuits are handled. Your speech topic is the purpose of the attention getter, not the other way around, so be sure to avoid any material that seems overly personal or does not fit the subject.
• A startling statement/statistic/fact can engage your audience with relevant information about your topic. If your speech is about oil conservation, you could start by saying, “A Boeing 747 airliner holds 57,285 gallons of fuel.” A speech on the psychology of dreams might begin with this thought: “The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.” Although startling statements are fun, it is important to use them ethically. (See Chapter 4 on ethics for more information on ethics and professional communication.) Make sure that your opening statement is factual. The internet is full of startling claims that are simply not accurate, so when you find a statement you would like to use, you have an ethical duty to ascertain its truth (and cite it correctly) before you use it.
• A rhetorical question may be a good way to draw your audience into your topic. For example, a speaker talking about the history of Mother’s Day could start by asking the audience, “Do you remember the last time you told your mom you loved her?” In this case, the speaker does not expect the audience to shout out an answer, but rather to think about the question as the speech continues.
• A direct reference to your audience may be an excellent method to engage them. Your audience is the single most important factor is crafting your speech, so it makes sense that you might acknowledge them in some way. Here is an example: “As students at Oklahoma State, you and I know the importance of selecting a major. In today’s competitive world, we need to choose a major that will lead to employment and provide us with fulfilling careers. That’s why I want you all to consider majoring in communication.” In this example, the speaker reminds the audience of their shared status as Oklahoma State students and uses this common ground to acknowledge the importance of selecting a major.
• An opening quotation is another way to capture your listeners’ attention. Maybe you will find an interesting quotation in one of the articles or books you read while researching your speech. Quotations may add an element of fun to a speech: “As the late actress, fashion icon, and social activist Audrey Hepburn once noted, ‘Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I’m possible’!” As with this example, be sure to credit the source first if you use a quotation as your attention getter.
• Humor can be a great way to engage an audience, but it is a double-edged sword. If you do not wield the sword carefully, you can lose your audience very quickly. One of the biggest mistakes a speaker can make is to use some form of humor that the audience either does not find funny or, worse, finds offensive. Think about how incompetent the character of Michael Scott seems on the television program The Office, in part because of his ineffective use of humor. As with other attention-getting devices, your humor must be relevant to your topic and must respect your audience’s sensitivities.

This list of opening devices represents a starting point for beginning your speech. As indicated, your selection of attention getter is not only dependent on your audience, your topic, and the occasion, but also on your preferences and skills as a speaker.

Body As with the other sections of the presentation, keep in mind the importance of audience engagement. In general, the more interactive the presentation, the better; the more you know your audience, the better. Remember that each person’s learning style differs from the next, so do your best to engage your audience in different ways, possibly by including details that appeal to the five senses (sensory details). You might also include audio, tactile, and/or kinesthetic components in addition to your chosen visual.

With experience, you will learn to gauge your audience’s level of engagement and make small adjustments that help them to stay involved. Depending on context, it may be appropriate to include some movement; perhaps you ask your audience to engage with one another in small groups, which causes a small spatial shift, or perhaps you yourself take a few steps closer to a whiteboard. Integrating props or relevant hand gestures may achieve a similar effect. Our eyes naturally follow movement, so something as simple as walking across the room can serve to include more members of the audience and help them to re-engage. The techniques you can employ within the body of a presentation are many and various, but as above all, know yourself and know your audience. (See Chapter 2 for additional information on audience.)

Conclusion The conclusion has three specific elements that you will want to incorporate. Given the nature of these elements and what they do, these should generally be incorporated into your conclusion in the order they are presented below.

• Signal the end. A good conclusion should clearly signal the end of a speech. You may be thinking that telling an audience you are about to end is a no brainer, but many speakers do not prepare their audience for their conclusion. When a speaker just suddenly stops speaking, the audience is left confused and disappointed. Instead, give listeners a clear signal so that they can mentally organize and catalog all the points you have made for further consideration later.

Generally, the easiest way to forecast the end of your speech is to include a verbal signal that is meta-discursive (or self-referential in some sense, referring back to the speech itself). Within a public speaking context, periodic meta-discursive references help an audience to track a speaker’s progress from introduction to conclusion. Common formulations include phrasings like in conclusion, in summary, and to conclude. Depending on your audience, you may choose a more conversational or creative method of signaling; you will want to make sure that the framing does not sound too cliché. You have  many options, but it should be clear to everyone that you are about to conclude. Also be aware that some of the common formulations (and saying them more than once) can have an unintended negative effect. The audience may decide you are finished and tune out, like how movie-goers get up and leave during the credits in a movie. If this is a concern, you can instead go straight to the summary explained further below.

• Restate main points. In the introduction of a speech you delivered a preview of your main points; in the conclusion you will likely deliver a review. Repetition is especially important in oral communication; include planned redundancy, but avoid being overly redundant. Just as you discussed and made transitions to your main points during the body of the speech, be sure to review the main points in the conclusion. These steps increase the likelihood that the audience will retain your main points after the speech is over.

As you review, avoid introducing new material or ideas. For example, if you said, “There are several other issues related to this topic, such as…but I don’t have time for them,” the audience may wonder why you did not address those in the body section. If you were giving a persuasive speech on wind energy and ended with “wind energy is the energy of the future, but there are still a few problems with it, such as noise and killing lots of birds,” you are bringing up a counter-argument that should have been dealt with in the body of the speech. The conclusion is not the place for new material.

• Include a clincher. The third element of your conclusion is the clincher, a memorable ending sometimes referred to as a concluding device. Make these words count, since they are the last you will include in the speech. In a sense, you could think of your speech as a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant: the introduction is the appetizer that gets everyone ready for the main course, the body section is the “meat and vegetables,” and the conclusion is like dessert. But have you ever had a nice meal that ended with an unappetizing dessert? Regardless of how good the rest of the meal was, you probably walked away with a negative final impression.

The clincher is like the inverse of the attention-getter. You want to start the speech strong, and you want to end the speech strong. There are a number of ways you can make your clincher strong and memorable. You can conclude with a challenge, or a call to action. In a speech on the necessity of fund-raising, a speaker could challenge the audience to raise 10% more than their original projections. In a speech on eating more vegetables, a speaker could challenge the audience to increase their current intake of vegetables by two portions daily, asking audience members to take a specific action or make a change. Challenges can be aspirational and they can be inspirational, but they should always be reasonable; the audience should see the challenge as attainable.

12.3 Presentation Options

Quite often, you will have to prepare visual materials to accompany your talk. You might prepare handouts, but it is even more probable that you will need to prepare materials that can be projected on a video screen. The classic version of these projected materials is the overhead transparency, a thin sheet of clear plastic that you can run through a laser printer or write on with special markers; this medium is quickly disappearing, although it still surfaces. Sometimes, you might be able to project paper documents to a screen via a document camera, but doc cams are becoming less common, and they can only present static images.

Instead, you will most likely be asked to create a dynamic presentation using software such as PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote. Many other programs exist, including what Google has to offer, but these are among the three most common presentation programs. Each program has its own special abilities and strengths; however, they all share common basic principles that you can use to create memorable, effective, and interesting presentations. The following information will help you with selecting an effective presentation format.

Three Major Presentation Formats For a presentation using PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote, you can choose from three general formatting options: 1) bullet points, 2) illustrated points, and 3) speaker’s prop. The format you choose should fit your audience and your presentation’s subject.

Bullet Points. The bullet points format is the default layout for most PowerPoint users and viewers. Slides created in this format commonly include a title across the top and a cascading series of bulleted lines of text inside a slide’s main text box. Here is an example of this kind of slide:

Bullet points format presentations have several benefits. First, they are easy to prepare. (Just type, press Enter for a new line, and hit Tab to create a smaller bullet or Shift+Tab to make a larger bullet.) Secondly, they are useful for highlighting important words or naming concepts that an audience needs to learn. Finally, they project a serious tone and sense of professionalism.

As you consider these options, keep in mind that bullet points format presentations may be boring unless precautions are taken to keep the audience engaged; an overload of words may also make your audience cringe or lose interest. You have probably endured at least one bad PowerPoint in your life, and odds are, that bad presentation used the bullet points format.

Illustrated Points. The illustrated points format is similar, but slides created in this type of presentation focus on pictures, and text appears in a supporting role. An example of this kind of slide appears below.

Illustrated points format slides have several benefits. They are excellent for showing conceptual relationships or demonstrating physical relationships between objects. People often respond positively to pictures, so illustrated points format slides also tend to capture viewers’ interest more than all-text presentations do. These slides require more detailed preparation, however, and they tend to be more visually busy. If your audience has problems concentrating, if you need to highlight important words, or if you need to move quickly through the information on the slides, you may want a more text-based approach. Illustrated points format slides can also be combined with bullet points format slides inside the same presentation.

Speaker’s Prop. The speaker’s prop format is similar to the illustrated points format, but a speaker’s prop almost entirely consists of simple pictures that flash onscreen in rapid sequence. Any text that appears is very short, uses a large font, and only appears for a moment. A speaker’s prop is appropriate for abstract subjects (e.g., the nature of free will), and if it is done well, it can be fascinating and will engage an audience. However, this type of presentation is often more complex and time-consuming to prepare than a presentation in the other formats, and you run the risk of making it so entertaining that the audience may remember the presentation but forget what you said. An example of a speaker’s prop presentation appears in the YouTube video below:

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RrpajcAgR1E ).

Whichever format you choose, remember that the presentation software is your servant; do not let it tell you what to do, and always modify a template to suit your needs. As an excellent example of what not to do, consider Peter Norvig’s classic Gettysburg PowerPoint: ( https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ ).

It serves as a satirical example of how an excellent speech—in this case, Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address, widely considered one of the classic speeches in the English language—can be ruined by using presentation software default settings and following a built-in template without modifying it.

12.4 Slide Design Tips

The guidelines in the design chapter—CRAP in particular—will help you create consistent, helpful, and visually appealing slides. But all the design skill in the world will not help you if your content is not tightly focused, smoothly delivered, and visible. Slides overloaded with text and/or images will strain your audience’s capacity to identify important information. Complex, distracting transitions or confusing (or boring) graphics that are not consistent with your content are worse than no graphics at all. Here are some general tips:

• Think simplicity. Use a small number of high-quality graphics and limit bullet points and text. Also avoid thinking of a slide as a page that your audience should read; instead, elaborate on major points with examples to keep the presentation interesting and pare down text as much as possible. Remember: even if you are presenting a slideshow, you want the audience to pay more attention to your words than to the slides themselves. Too much text will make the audience concentrate on reading slides instead of listening carefully to the verbal information.
• Break up your information. Organize the information into small chunks of text—phrases rather than complete sentences—to make sure your presentation flows well. Some experts recommend having no more than five bullet points per slide. If you do have more than five, you may want to set up the bullet points to appear a few at a time (in order, on separate slides, or in different columns) to avoid the distraction of a longer list.
• Have a consistent visual theme. Some pros advise that you avoid using the stock PowerPoint templates, but the Repetition and Alignment aspects of CRAP are so important that the templates may be your best starting point.
• Choose a simple color scheme. In general, three to six colors should provide variety without overloading readers. Be consistent in how you use the colors. For example, if you use red font for the first 12 slides, you should probably not switch to blue font in the last 12 slides unless there is a clear and logical reason for doing so.
• Choose your font carefully. Make sure the text is readable from a distance in a darkened room. Many guidelines suggest that you use at least a 24-point font. Contrast is also important; place dark font on a light background or vice-versa.
• Practice your presentation. Software is only a tool, and the slide projector is not presenting—you are in charge. Realizing this is half the battle.
• Use graphics. In general, substantive slides should present a graphic that illustrates or supports your main point. Instead of the typical topic and bullet point slide layout, a more effective strategy for PowerPoint presentations slides may involve offering a claim backed by visual support in the form of a photo, graph, illustration, chart, etc.
• Be careful not to overload the slide (with either too much text or too many graphics). There is not necessarily one rule of thumb for how much is too much, but be deliberate with choices.

12.5 Pitfalls of Presentation Software

Since Microsoft introduced PowerPoint in 1990, the conference room has never been the same. Millions were amazed by the speed with which a marketing professional or an academic could put together a consistent, professional-looking slide presentation. And then . . .

At some point, somebody with critical thinking skills asked a great question: “Do we really need all these slide shows?” The stock images of arrows, business people in suits, stick figures scratching their heads, and the glowing, jewel-toned backgrounds eventually looked tired and failed to evoke the “wow” reaction presenters desired.

Microsoft is attempting to refresh the design options for PowerPoint, and there are dozens of good alternatives, some of them free (Keynote, Slide Bureau, Prezi, SlideRocket, Easel.ly, Emaze, Slidedog). But the fundamental problem remains—text-heavy, unfocused, long presentations are the problem, not the software. If you are sure that a visual presentation will provide something necessary to your audience, keep the number of slides and the amount of text on each slide to a bare minimum. Think of a slide presentation as a way of supporting or augmenting the content in your talk; the slides should not replace your content.

Above all, do not read the slides to your audience, which is considered one of the single most annoying things a presenter can do; it also makes the presenter seem unprepared. Excessively small text and complex visuals (including distracting animations) are also frequently cited as annoyances. Instead, make sure that viewers can read slides easily from the back of the room. Also try to design your slides so that they contain information that your viewers might want to write down. For example, good presentations often contain data points that speakers cannot just rattle off or quick summaries of key concepts that viewers will not be able to make up on the fly. If you cannot explain how the slides add value to your presentation, it might be best to avoid using them altogether.

To get a feel for what may annoy your audience, try Googling “annoying PowerPoint presentations.” Also consider designing your presentation to allow for audience participation instead of passive viewing of a slideshow—a good group activity or a two-way discussion is a far better way to keep an audience engaged than a stale, repetitive set of slides.

In summary, a tool is only as effective as the person using it. Presentation software like PowerPoint does not make students stupid and professors boring; rather, poor use of this tool makes for ineffective presentations and can lead to laziness in both the audience and the presenter. Many of the problems with presentations result from readily accessible tools being used by individuals untrained in rhetorical and visual design. Fortunately, students of technical communication can implement a change of strategy to make presentations more effective.

12.6 Presentation Preparation

Research shows that public speaking rates among people’s top fears; some surveys suggest that it ranks above fear of surgery, or even death. Why do so many people dislike public speaking? This is a complex question, and the answer is tied to factors both personal and psychological, ranging from past experience and training to culture and context. The term glossophobia combines the Greek words for “tongue” and “fear or dread” to reference a severe fear of public speaking. People who suffer from glossophobia tend to freeze in front audiences. This fear may surface in situations such as responding to a professor in class or having to interact with a stranger, not just giving formal speeches.

Here are some strategies to help overcome anxiety as you prepare for your presentation. In addition to planning the details of content and delivery, be sure to prepare physically. Adequate sleep and rest are crucial. You might be thinking such a thing is impossible in college or in a demanding full-time job, where sleep deprivation and late nights come with the territory. However, research shows the extreme effects a lifestyle of limited sleep can have, far beyond yawning or dozing off in class. Energy levels (and your ability to be alert during the speech) will be affected by lack of sleep.

As you prepare, you may want to eat something that is protein-based before speaking. In other words, cheese or peanut butter on whole grain toast, Greek yogurt, or eggs for breakfast would be preferable to more sugary options. Also wear clothes that are comfortable but meet the context’s formality requirements. Wear the same outfit when you rehearse the presentation so that you will feel comfortable walking and moving in that attire. Comfortable, professional shoes will give you a firm base for your posture. You might consider utilizing some stretching or relaxation techniques that will loosen your limbs or throat. Tightening and stretching your hands, arms, legs, and throat for a few seconds before speaking can help release some of the tension. Also, bring something to drink to prevent dry mouth, and take several deep breaths (to release stress and steady your voice) before climbing on stage. People tend to speak faster and at a higher pitch when they are nervous and giving a presentation. Make an effort to speak at a comfortable pace and avoid letting your voice rise too high. Do not apologize before you give your presentation; being nervous is normal, and although you may feel jittery, chances are your audience will not mind or will not even notice.

Contextual Preparation The more you can know about the venue where you will be speaking, the better. Whenever possible, check out the space in advance. For example, if you were required to give a short talk for a job interview, you would want to know what the room will be like, if there is equipment for projection, how large the audience will be, and how seating will be arranged. Consider practicing your presentation in a room that is similar to the actual space where you will deliver it. The best advice for contextual preparation is to be on time, even early. If you have to rush in at the last minute, it will be difficult to stay calm and focused for the speech. If you are early, you may be able to make sure equipment is working, or even converse with the audience as they enter. Professional speakers often do this to relax themselves, build credibility, and gain knowledge to adapt their presentations to the audience. Being on time will help you create a good first impression and thus enhance your credibility before the actual speech.

Procrastination and Preparedness Procrastination is the great enemy of preparedness. Fluid, articulate public speaking requires repeated practice before the actual delivery. The first time that you say the words should not be when you are in front of your audience. Practicing is the best way to feel confident and in control of the words you speak. As you practice, time yourself to be certain that your speech meets the time limit; speaking within the expected time is a cardinal rule of public speaking. Practice aloud, preferably with someone to listen, while using your visual aids. If you can record yourself in order to analyze gestures and delivery, you will be able to fine-tune and adjust elements of your speaking style. The most effective way to gain a reputation as someone who does not respect an audience (or someone who should not be allowed to run meetings) is to talk longer than the allotted time. Not only will practice help you to feel comfortable with presentation delivery, but it will also ensure that you do not upset your audience by running over the time limit.

Final Note: If you are an audience member, you can help speakers to feel more comfortable, at least a little bit. Be an engaged listener from beginning to end. You can imagine that a speaker is going to be more nervous if the audience looks bored from the start. A speaker with less anxiety will do a better job and be more interesting, so give the speaker your full attention, nod along to main points, ask questions where appropriate, and stay off your phone unless you are using it to take notes.

12.7 Delivery Tips

What follows are some general tips you should keep in mind, but they all essentially derive from one very straight-forward premise: practice your speech beforehand, at home or elsewhere, the way you will give it.

• Practice your speech aloud. This technique enables speakers to learn the words and be prepared, but it also lets them know of any potential problems. Sentences on paper do not always translate when spoken. Practicing out loud allows speakers to identify and fix issues with pronunciation and delivery before getting up in front of the audience.
• Avoid excessive body movements. This includes nervous or unnecessary hand motions, unnecessary tapping of feet or hands, etc. But also avoid standing stock still; some hand gestures can keep the audience engaged.
• Eliminate filler words such as “uh” and “um.” Recording yourself, or asking a friend to listen to your speech, can help you to identify this tendency. In some cases, it may be possible to integrate meaningful pauses in the place of filler words to reduce their frequency.
• Project your voice. Soft-spoken speakers may have to speak louder to ensure that everyone can hear, while avoiding the appearance of shouting or reaching an awkwardly squeaky pitch. If you will be using a microphone, practice in advance how you will hold it and the volume you will use.
• Articulate sentences clearly. Again, be aware of your own tendencies. If you tend to elide words, or if you have a regional accent that differs from your audience’s, you may need to slow down and practice enunciating in a way that sounds natural rather than forced.
• Add inflection and expression. Presenters who speak in a monotone will have difficulty keeping an audience engaged.
• Refuse to become flustered. In many cases, an apology is unnecessary and will only draw undue attention to minor oversights, whether perceived or actual. Instead, take a breath, re-focus, and move on with the speech.
• Make eye contact. If it feels awkward to maintain direct eye contact, look around the room at forehead level, or a point slightly above viewers’ heads, making sure to include the entire audience.
• Maintain an open body posture. Crossed arms, for example, can make a speaker seem closed off to the audience. In contrast, open hand gestures that are not excessive tend to communicate a corresponding openness to audience engagement and ideas.

There is no preset pattern for perfect delivery. However, with practice everyone can improve. For a few additional tips and suggestions, check out this amusing TedX talk on YouTube by Will Stephen:

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o ).

As you practice your presentation skills, remember that each speaker is entirely unique, and we each embody different experiences and interests. This means that all speakers must find their own most effective style.

Attribution

Material in this chapter was adapted from the works listed below. The material was edited for tone, content, and localization.

Exploring Public Speaking ,  by Kris Barton and Barbara G. Tucker, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA .

Technical Writing , by Allison Gross, Annamarie Hamlin, Billy Merck, Chris Rubio, Jodi Naas, Megan Savage and Michele DiSilva, licensed CC-BY-NC-SA .

ENGL 145 Technical and Report Writing ,  by the Bay College Online Learning Department , licensed CC-BY .

Chapter 12: Oral Reports Copyright © 2019 by Katrina Peterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Oral presentations: Part 1-4

This series of four videos covers preparing for a group presentation, how to structure your presentation, presentation skills and having a clear message.

Organising group work

A group presentation does not involve separate parts getting stitched together at the last minute. Group members need to collaborate at key points throughout the whole process. Watch this video and see how.

Your talk may be a group effort and this introduces organizational issues that can make or break the success of your presentation.

It's not appropriate to dissect the talk like a cake and distribute the parts to individual members to take care of. The body needs to be worked on by everyone collaboratively.

Specific sections of the body may be divided between your team to be deeply researched or delivered. But at some stage you need to regroup to put those pieces back together again. First of all, you need to be able to meet face-to-face preferably, and it would be good to have a regular time when this is convenient for all of you. At least once each week.

Don’t forget to exchange phone numbers and emails as well.
 If this is not a familiar topic, everyone should just go there own way at first and read broadly to get a feel for the area. But sharing any articles are particularly good of course.


You need to regroup soon, and decide what two to four topics should be covered. That is, if these are not already specified by your lecturer and it would be excellent to agree on a central message before you start writing the body, if possible.


If you want a central theme, this should be defined early on if you can to guide people's research from the beginning. >When the topics are decided you can go your own way and research your section deeply.

Keep in touch regularly with any of the other group members, whose area may overlap yours, because you don’t want to repeat material.


It is most satisfying and effective if you get to talk on the topic that you have researched yourself. You want to sound like the expert.

Remember not to measure your contribution to the group in terms of minutes standing up in speaking. This is never the hardest part. The hardest part lies in the researching, collaboration and preparation of visual resources.


Once the body of your talk is defined, the group should get together and outline the introduction and conclusion together.

One person might write from the perspective of the part that they researched, and introductions and conclusions need to have a sense of overview.


Writing the introduction and conclusion will be easy once the body is done.

But they are almost impossible to write in isolation from the body.

In the next chapter we will be looking at part two of oral presentations a sample structure.

A sample structure

Just as writing tasks have a structure, oral presentations have structure too. Without the structure, your key points will lack strength or be lost entirely. Watch this video and get some tips on how to get your message across effectively.

A sample structure of an oral presentation that I will outline here is about ‘autistic spectrum disorders’. This sample is supposed to be the outline of a twenty-minute in-class presentation.

To hold the whole talk together, I’ve also thought about the central point or message that I would like to get across. In this talk, I would like to emphasise the idea that autism encompasses a very broad range of severities – from profoundly affected to mildly affected individuals – and for this reason, it often goes unrecognised when the autism is at high functioning levels.

In the introduction, I need to establish my topic and it’s importance. Of course, this is the best place to establish your central theme or message, if you have one. If you have a particular reason for talking about this topic from your own work, life, or experience, that is always very engaging for the audience as well. Briefly outline the points you will cover, This is very important if you do not have a projected slide or handouts, where the audience can keep track of this. But avoid any detail at this stage. In a twenty-minute talk, you should limit the introduction to two minutes if possible.

The conclusion will consist of no new information about autism itself. The conclusion is the space to recap and remind the listener what we have touched on. If anything that is mentioned is new, it will be about the future needs and directions. The conclusion would be a great place to make recommendations about what should be done at a society level or what needs to be investigated further in research.

Once again, this could be made to tie in with our message, that some people can have some form of autism and yet many of their teachers or colleagues do not fully recognise or understand their condition because they expect it to be more noticeable.

The number of points that you will cover will vary from topic to topic. The advice is to have fewer points than too many in your body. If you have a lot of points, try to group them under three to four themes Talk about less, and go for depth rather than briefly skimming through a shopping list of ideas. If you decide to do an activity in your presentation, put it in where it’s most relevant. However it is probably better to do it earlier in the body or even in the introduction. because it can pique the listener's curiosity before they receive a lot information.

If you do have a central message, become skilled at saying the same thing in many different ways. Just as I’ve been doing. It would be very tedious to repeat exactly the same words of course. But, if you do it in a very subtle way, your audience will appreciate the enforcement of that idea.

Presentation skills

Being a good speaker is something that can be learned and practised. This video will give you some tips for delivering an effective and professional talk.

Many students approach writing their oral presentation the same way they approach writing an essay when, in fact, the two are completely different. An oral presentation is assessed on how well you can communicate your message or If you like, how you perform. You may get some assessment marks for the slides you produce or the handouts you’ve made, but essentially you will be marked by how well you communicate your message on the day.

So, do not write pages of sentences as you would in an essay. You cannot read these out. Natural speech does not use the long and grammatically complicated sentences that you would write in a text. Your audience would have to concentrate very hard to listen to that.

Think of your audience. and how you will keep their attention. You need to make it relevant for them, and not just show how much you’ve read. You cannot deliver all of the information you might fit into an essay. For an oral presentation, you need to reduce the amount of detail and repeat key ideas a lot more. What helps a lot is to have a key idea, or message, that you want your audience to remember. They may forget 80% of your talk, but if you have a key theme or a main point that you emphasise over and over again, they will likely remember that. And later, it is easier to remember details in relation to that key point.

Do not give the impression that you are relating what you have recently read in textbooks. Aim to give the impression that you know a lot about this, topic and that you’ve been working in the field for years. You need to have that air of confidence that comes from talking about something you know really well and have a lot of experience in. Generally, this will not be the reality of course, but you can get very familiar with your topic by reading lots and lots of literature. Five minutes of effective speaking does not mean you have only gathered five minutes of information.

As mentioned, you need to talk to your audience in a relaxed and natural, but still professional manner. You still want to keep on track, so dot points on cards – instead of, or in addition to your PowerPoint – can be quite useful. You don’t want the presentation to sound scripted, but you still want to keep on track; so speaking from dot points is efficient because you are on limited time. It also jogs your memory just in case you’re a little bit nervous.

Whether you use cards or the screen, remember to look up and look at your audience. This is very important if you really want to communicate with them. You need to relax because when you are nervous, you tend to rush onwards. Breathe deeply, stop to think for a moment. A moment may seem a long time to you, but to your audience it is not noticeable.

It’s also very helpful to indicate when a new topic is being moved onto. The audience do not have the visual cues of a new paragraph as you do when you’re reading. So these shifts in topic need to be shown or expressed. A fresh PowerPoint slide indicates a new shift in topic. But sometimes, it’s hard to know when a speaker has moved onto a new point within that slide. You can do this with words like: secondly, or on the other hand, or let us consider a further example. You might emphasise a new point by moving to a different spot on the stage, changing the quality of your voice, or just pausing for five to ten seconds.

The important thing is that these non-native features of your language do not interfere with the meaning of the message you are trying to communicate. Saying that, however, if you do have a strong or unusual accent; it may be wise to practice in front of a native speaker, and make sure that they can understand your terminology and what you are trying to say.

Thinking about the content

Do you have a message for your audience? Do you know what to say at each stage? Watch this video to avoid the ‘blah blah blah’ delivery and make this an interesting learning experience for your audience.

It is a good idea to establish your presence in the introduction of your oral presentation. This is the time to introduce yourself and your team, but keep it brief. Most importantly, establish what you will be talking about. Remember that your audience may know very little about your topic, if anything.

So, you may need to set the scene in a very simple and general way. If you have a key idea you’re building your talk around, it is good to identify that in your introduction. It always helps the audience to relate to the speaker and to the topic, if the speaker has a personal reason or a particular experience related to the topic. At least explain why you chose the topic and why you believe it will be worthwhile to listen to. However you do it, this is your chance to capture their attention.

If possible, structure your talk around a simple, one-line message. Think of one general concept that you want your audience to remember. If you build your talk around a simple message, it has much more coherence. It avoids the shopping list structure, where you present fact after fact after fact. Your audience will remember very little of this sort of talk because it presents a mass of detail and the focus is not clear.

You do need to read a lot to discover the overview off the topic, what is important, and what are the significant debates that are going on around this topic. You may need to answer questions on the spot, so you will need deep knowledge to draw from.

From the background that you have gained from your reading, it is up to you to decide what to include in the talk. Avoid looking to one book and structuring your talk around it’s headings, chapters or sections. Take a wider perspective. You are now the expert, you decide on the most interesting and important ideas to include in your talk.Because you are the expert, you determine where the talk goes. Don’t tell the audience what information is in the book for its own sake. Be selective and tell them what is important and most interesting, and tell them what the literature says about this. because different research journals often do not agree with one another.

Actually, the topics where there is disagreement are places to be explored rather than avoided. These are often the most engaging. If you do have any personal or professional experience in the topic, that is fantastic! Draw on this as well, but be sure to make clear where ideas are from your own perspective, and what things are actually from research. Include an activity if you can – if your audience is small enough to fit in a classroom.This will allow you to have some personal interaction. It is always more engaging if you can get the audience involved.

Your time is limited, so this need not be an activity on a large scale. You can get people to just “think of a time when”, or get the people to turn to the person next to them to discuss something for a minute, or make list of five things related to your topic. The tighter your schedule is, the less flexibility you will have with participation. But it adds a great deal in communicating your message.

Handouts may be a required part of your assessment. If you do not have a PowerPoint projector available, it may be helpful for your audience to have a visual guide or a program of what you will cover. Handouts like this can support your talk and the audience can have them in front of them while you are delivering your presentation. It can be useful for the audience to have a handout for other reaasons: it might be a part of one of your activities, or it may provide stats or formulae, because these may be difficult to express verbally or to copy down.

Handouts could also add to your talk by giving further information. This may include more details that you could not fit onto your talk, .or further readings or so on. However, handouts giving further information are not always a good idea to give out beforehand because they will take the audience's attention away from your presentation.

Just remember, an oral presentation is not like an essay. Do not think you would be able to cram in all the detail you would be able to put into a two-thousand-word text. You need to keep it simple, and in an oral presentation, you need to reinforce ideas a lot more.

If you are daunted by the idea of standing and talking for five to ten minutes, you will be surprised how little time this actually is when you have plenty to say – it goes very quickly. It is important to practice over and over again. And do this as you intend to do on the day. A full dress rehearsal is very necessary. This must be out loud, full volume, and with all the slides and charts you are planning to use. Practice with an audience if possible. Make sure you time yourself as you practices as well.

• Oral presentations basics
• Academic poster presentations
• Signal and transition words

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Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

Oral presentation tips: how to deliver a speech for school or work.

Jerz >  Writing > [ Academic |  Technical ] This document briefly describes how to  write and deliver a formal oral presentation on an academic or professional subject. It should be useful for anyone who wants to know how to speak in public.

Note: by “formal presentation,” I don’t necessarily mean a Shakespeare monologue or a scientific treatise on robot-assisted microsurgery. Giving an oral presentation on  any subject–your favorite book, current events, a family story–can be “formal” and “technical” whenever its primary purpose is to communicate complex information.

The  content is the most obvious component of any oral presentation — after all, if you are talking, you had better have something worthwhile to say.  But a presentation is only as effective as its  delivery .

Part 1: Planning the Content

1.  Determine your goals. 2.  Prepare your material. 3.  Study a model. 4.  Arrange with your strongest points first . 5. Practice, practice, practice .

Part 2: Delivering the Content

6.  Make eye contact with your audience. 7. Engage actively with the audience. 8. A slide show is not a speech. 9.  Watch the time! 10.  Take questions in the middle, not the end?

1) Determine Your Goals as a Speaker

2) Prepare your material

Plan. Practice. Keep what’s good and try again. 

Good speakers usually aim to look like they are speaking effortlessly, tossing off words as they come to mind. What you don’t see is the preparation that paved the way for the polished performance. It’s all an act! You can do it too, if you plan ahead.

Once you know what your goal is, and you know what your audience wants, you can start strategizing. There is no single strategy that will guarantee success. How you plan depends on many variables.

How many minutes long is your speech? About how many words do you speak per minute?

Will your audience be lost if you use jargon? Will they feel talked down to if you spend time defining terms they already know?

Do you expect that your audience will disagree with you? (If so, you might need to give more examples and more evidence and spend more time addressing reasonable objections in order to sound convincing, which may mean talking a little faster.)

Do you expect your audience already agrees with the position you will take? (If so, they may check out if your speech simply rehashes arguments they already accept without question. What can you say to an audience that already agrees with you? Why would you listen to a speaker who is restating things you already accept as the truth?)

Graphics, inspirational quotations, and anecdotes are all well-respected methods of maintaining audience interest. However, Pinterest clip art, fancy computer transitions between slides, and vaudeville tricks get old pretty quickly (see Don McMillan’s hilarious “ Death by Powerpoint “), and they eat up time that you could use more effectively.

3) Study a Model

The internet is of course full of examples of good speeches, but the YouTube users who vote on videos may not have much in common with the audience who will hear your oral presentation.

Do you have access to speeches that your discourse community values? Your instructor or supervisor may not have ready access to video recordings from last year’s class or last quarter’s budget meeting, but you can pay attention to the speaking techniques deployed by people with authority in your field.

For instance, I have a colleague who never says, “This is taking too long, and I’m watching the clock, so let’s get on with it already.” Instead, this person says, “I’m conscious of everyone’s time, so shall we move on to the next item?”

Bear in mind that

• if you have been assigned to deliver a speech that defends a position on a topic (such as, whether Huckleberry Finn should be taught in middle school)…
• but your instructor usually refrains from stating any one answer is the best (preferring instead to present several viewpoints and letting the students decide for themselves)…
• then your instructor’s open-ended lecture (intended to spark a discussion) is not a good model of a position statement (intended to showcase your ability to latch onto a specific solution).

While this handout aims to provide general tips, you should ignore any general tip that contradicts something specific you learn about the goals, context, or genre of the specific speech you are preparing.

General Model

Successful oral presentations typically share some basic characteristics, owing to the nature of the spoken word.

• Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
• Tell them what you told them.

When we read, we can go back and reread passages we skimmed over the first time, and we can skip ahead when we’re bored. In a live oral presentation, the audience can’t re-read or skip ahead. If the audience doesn’t know why they are listening to your anecdote about winning the spelling bee, or why they should care what version of the software was installed on the computer that you used to crunch your numbers, their attention will wander and it will be hard to get it back.

When we listen, we gratefully cling to orientation phrases that help us understand what the whole shape of a speech is, where we are within the overall structure, and when we are transitioning from one section to another.

Your specific occasion for delivering a speech may involve specific contextual details that don’t mesh with the general advice I’m providing here.

• Introduction :   "I am Pinky J. Witzowitz from the U.S. Department of Bureaucracy, and I have been asked to speak for 20 minutes on 'The Government's Plan for Preventing Situation X in America's Heartland.'"
• "Situation X is the worst thing that can happen to you and your family." [ Startling claim ; follow up by citing the source of this quote, or giving evidence that supports it.]
• "It happened once to a family in Dubuque, and they were never heard from again." [ Anecdote ; follow up with details.]
• "I am here today to tell you how to prevent this terrible tragedy from striking you." [ Demonstrates relevance ; move directly to your  road map ]
• Main Content :  Put up a slide with topics to cover, a specific problem to solve, or a series of questions to answer. Promise that your talk will address the material on that slide. You might even return to that slide each time you start a new subsection, with the current place in the talk highlighted.
• Questions/Comments from the Audience? Even though most people save the question period until the end, they lose the opportunity to modify their conclusion to address the interests of the audience.
• Recap :  Our earnest “Situation X” speaker might give microencapsulated answers to all the questions on the main road map:  "We have learned that Situation X is a blah blah blah; that we should all care about it because yada, yada, yada..."
• Wrap it up : After reminding the audience how all these factors fit together, the speaker might say,  "Now that you understand how the U.S. Department of Bureaucracy helps you keep Situation X out of your life, please take one of our pamphlets home to your family and put it by the telephone where you can get it in an emergency; your family will thank you."
• Invite Questions :   If there is time, and if you haven’t already done so.

4) Arrange with Your Strongest Points First

In rare cases — such as when you are facing a hostile audience, you might want to start out by emphasizing where you agree with your audience, and then carefully working your way towards your most divisive, most daring claims.

• If the question is actually important to your talk,  you’ll probably be able to answer right away.
• If you can’t answer right away, or you don’t want to take the time, just promise you’ll follow up via e-mail , and then go right back to your presentation. Most  audience members will probably have been annoyed by the interruption.  They will be  delighted that you  didn’t take the questioner’s bait .

5) Practice, Practice, Practice.

Set a timer, and deliver your speech to a willing co-worker or family member, your pet fish, or the bathroom mirror.

My students are often surprised at how hard it is to fill up 3 minutes for an informal practice speech early in the term, and how hard it is to fit everything they want to say into a 10-minute formal speech later in the term.

Once you have the right amount of content, make a video recording of yourself practicing. If you plan to show a video clip, or ad-lib an explanation of a diagram, or load a website, or pass out paper handouts, or saw an assistant in half, actually do it while the camera is rolling, so that you know exactly how much time it takes.

Time it out.

• Script out a powerful introduction and conclusion.
• Know how long each section of your speech should take.
• which example or anecdote you will cut if you are running long?
• what additional example you can introduce if you need to fill time?

If you know your conclusion takes you 90 seconds to deliver, make sure to start your conclusion when you have at least 90 seconds left.

At several key points during your speech, maybe while you are playing a video or while the audience is taking in a complex image, glance at the clock and check to see — are you on track?

If you notice you’re starting Section 3 60 seconds later than you had intended, try to make up for time by rushing through your second example in section 3 and cutting the third example in section 4, so that you still have the full 90 seconds at the end to deliver that powerful conclusion.

Technological Considerations

• Do you know how to connect your computer to the overhead projector? (If you don’t know, who does?)
• What will you do if you can’t get your computer connected to the projector? (Back in 2003, when I applied for my current job at Seton Hill University, I was asked to give a teaching demonstration. I couldn’t get my laptop to work with the overhead projector, but I had posted the most important links on my blog, and I had brought along a printout of my speech, just in case. My preparations have paid off, because I got the job.)
• In the room where you will be speaking, will you be using a microphone, or relying on your unamplified voice?
• Will you be able to walk around with the microphone — perhaps to gesture at details in the slides — or is the mic attached to a stand? (Do you need to borrow a laser pointer, or get a volunteer to advance slides for you?)

6) Make Eye Contact With Your Audience.

I once sat through a four-hour training session, during which this was all I could see of the instructor.

Go ahead and write your whole speech out so you can read robotically if you blank out, but you should practice your speech so you know it well enough that you can glance up from your notes and look at your audience as you speak.

7) Engage with the audience.

Pay attention to the audience, and they will pay attention to you.

Don’t try to recite from memory . If you spend your energy worrying about what you’re supposed to say next, you won’t be able to pay attention to whether the audience can hear you, or whether the overhead projections are focused.

Preparation : Set up before the audience files into their seats. If you have scheduled a presentation for a class, don’t sit in your seat like a lump while your professor calls the roll and hands out papers. Few things are more boring than watching a presenter log into the computer, fiddle with the video data projector, hunt around for the light switches, etc.

Introduction : As the audience files into their seats, have a title card displayed on the screen — or at least write your  name and the title of your talk on the whiteboard.  In a formal setting, usually a moderator will usually introduce you, so you won’t need to repeat everything the moderator says.  Avoid canned introductions like “Principal Burch, members of the faculty, and fellow students, we are gathered here today…”

Hashtag : If it’s likely that many people in your audience use the same social media network, consider encouraging them to post their thoughts there. When you introduce yourself, give your social media handle and suggest a hashtag.

Handouts : Consider distributing handouts that present the basic facts (names, dates, timelines) and your main points.  You can keep the conclusion just slightly mysterious, if you don’t want to give everything away immediately, but the idea is to free the audience from the feeling that they have to write everything down themselves. (Note: Simply printing up all the overhead slides wastes a lot of paper.)

Grabber : Grab the attention of your audience with a startling fact or claim, an inspiring quotation, or a revealing anecdote.   This is not the time to try out your nightclub act; the “grabber” is not just comic relief, it also helps you set up the problem that you are going to address.  If the audience will be diverse and general, you can use the “grabber” as a metaphor, helping the audience see why the topic is so important to you, and how it might be important to them, too.  If your audience shares your technical specialty, and thus needs no special introduction to the topic, feel free simply to state your purpose without much to-do; but bear in mind that even technical audiences don’t want to be bored.

Road Map : Once you have established the problem or the main point of your talk, let the audience know how you are going to get to a solution.  You might put up a series of questions on a slide, then as your talk progresses, proceed to answer each one.  You might break each question down into a series of smaller questions, and answer each one of these in turn.  Each time you finish a subsection, return to the road map, to help your audience keep track of where you have been and where you are going.

Conclusion : To give your presentation closure, return to the “grabber”, and extend it, modify it, or otherwise use it to help drive home your main point.  Recap your main points, and demonstrate how they all fit together into a thought that the audience members can take with them.

8) A Slide Show Is Not a Speech

Don’t read word-for-word with your nose buried in a stack of papers . If you bother to show up to hear a person speak, how do you feel when the speaker mumbles through page after page of written text? Do you feel you should have just asked for a copy of the paper in the mail?

When you present, make every effort to include your audience; after all, they are the reason you are speaking in the first place.

If you do feel that you must write out your speech word-for-word, you should be familiar enough with it that you don’t need to look at the paper all the time. (And hold the page up when you glance at it, rather than bending down to look at it.)

9) Watch the time!

To help pace yourself, at the top of each page of your notes,  write down what time it should be ; as you turn each page, you can glance at the clock and see whether you are on track.

(The first time I gave this advice to a technical writing class, I mimed the action of “looking at the clock” — and noticed that I was running ten minutes behind, eating into time that I had promised to a student for an in-class testing session.  That was a rather humbling experience!)

See the “preparation” section above. If you have already practiced your speech and timed out the various sections, you’ll know whether you are running long. If you are, don’t talk faster — cut  something that you already marked out as optional.

Decide in advance which examples, which anecdotes, which subsections you can drop, without damaging the whole presentation.

I was at a conference in 1998 where the first speaker talked for 40 minutes — double  her allotted time.  (Why the moderator allowed this is a mystery to me.)

• None of the other speakers on the panel felt like cutting their talks to compensate.
• The result was that the last scheduled speaker — who had paid for an international plane ticket and a week in a hotel — did not get to speak at all.

10) Take questions in the middle, not at the end?

The benefits include:

• If you spark a good Q & A session, your audience will remember and appreciate it.
• If nobody has any questions,  you can just fill up the space with more of your own material .  That would be much harder to do if you have already wrapped up your talk and had nothing left to say.
• If you really know your material, you can  adjust your conclusion to address the questions raised by the audience.  Even if someone in the audience steals a little of your thunder by bringing up points you were saving for your big finish, you will appear smart for having predicted that audience response. At the same time, someone in your audience will feel smart for having anticipated what you were going to say.

Dennis G. Jerz , 01/27/2009 07:24:28 Oct, 1999 — first written 03 Dec, 2000 — posted here 03 June 2003 — tweaked and updated 30 Oct 2011 — updated and added video links 31 May 2016 — major update; separated into “preparation” and “presentation” sections. 26 Jan 2018 — blackboard -> whiteboard

50 thoughts on “ Oral Presentation Tips: How to Deliver a Speech for School or Work ”

Thanks alot for your teachings

Thank a lot , really great tip for oral presentation, i’ll implement these tips, and will let you know.

Very helpful tips.

this is awfully helpful. I am a teacher in France and my students have to do presentations in English. I wish they could read this and understand.

Thank you for these very useful tips on Oral presentation. I am taking an Organizational Behavior class and need to do a 5 minute oral presentation on a real life situation about Conflict Management in the Workplace. I am not sure how to structure or begin the presentation.

I like it Really helpful for me

Thank you for helping me to do my presentation…..and I have learned so much from oral presentation.

thankyou thankyou thankyou this helped me so much!!! : )

thankyou thankyou thankyou this helped me so much in english!!! : )

Thanks. Really helpful

Hi, I going to do 3 minute presentation and my topic is My son. what is a best tips to talk about the this topic. I am not sure where to start. Any tips to help me with.

Is that the topic you were assigned? Are you taking a public speaking class, a child development class, a class in writing personal memoirs, or are you learning English as a second language? I don’t know how your instructor will evaluate your work, so I am not sure how to help.

You might find it useful to look at this handout on writing personal essays. http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/personal-essays/

Hi, I going to do minute presentation and my topic is My son. what is a best tips to talk about the this topic. I am not sure where to start. Any tips to help me with.

This sort of helped

Denise Gillen Caralli liked this on Facebook.

Enter your comment here…Thanks a lot… I will follow your instructions..I’m hopeful those tips will work. .. Thanks once again….

Thanks so much will follow your instruction tomorrow where I will be having presentation with 180 Head masters about suplimetary feeding on their hunger striken ares

Yeah ,thanks and good luck to all of you from a powerful Jamaican girl

That’s great… It will work well for those who are aiming for like me. Thanks!

The tips are totally handy until now I am still applying it.

Appreciate it. =)

Very helpful for my presentation. Thanks!

I have learned a lot on this…thanks

Thanks a lot I have learned so much on this

I suppose to give out a presentation on Monday on someone or something in either an athlete or an actor and I don’t know how to start

i have a question i am supposed to give a speech but it has to have a power point or a drama thing the only problem is that i can’t have a power point because it won’t work into my speech and neither will a drama thing what should i do?

I suggest you talk to whoever set up the requirement for a slideshow/drama component. Maybe there is some flexibility, or maybe you’ll find a way to work that component into your speech.

Thank you heaps this really helped a lot

that is such good information and i believe im going to pass my speeches.

wow!!this are really helpfull stuff..but im just not confident enough to stand infront of all those people..wish i could do it without them looking at me

blind fold them! just joking…I’m getting ready to do mine and I’m having the same problem as you.

this is a helpfull site

this isn’t helping me with how nervous I am!! bye!!

love it really helped

thanks you are good

I have to do a presentation about “Importance of learning English”. There are 6 people in my group including myself. The presentation has to be exactly 8 minutes. We can’t use PowerPoint. Can you give us any unique, memorable and creative idea?

What are some lessons or life experiences that you find unique and memorable? I’d probably do a play, with a character who gets into trouble because he/she doesn’t know English, and then has a chance to correct those problems by demonstrating how learning English can fix the problems.

Hello mr.Dennis,I go straight to it.how can I become the most sought after Master of Ceremony(M.C.)/tv show presenter extra-ordinaire in my country before going international?any useful tips?

Sorry, that question is not something I cover on this page.

really well writen loved how you added steps so its easy to follow clear easily can be understaned and really helps us and gives us tips that we should actually think about and use at times

Yeah! I found it quite impressive. I hope it’z gonna be helpful for me to develop my speech techniques.

Nice tips….i think it will help me. but it’s too lengthy,it takes so much of time to read.

This really helps to prepare for all sort of things, Thanks a lot

Really helpful! Thank you

Pingback: Oral Presentation Readings « readwriteredroom

i love this helpful tips of oral presentation.. hope to visit this again or i just make a hard copy of this… thank you very much for that…

it was quite helpful

thank you for the great tip, but my problem is actually that I have a presentation on ‘All About Me’ and I have to keep the audience ‘engaged’ like by making a guessing game or something. If anyone has any other ideas please help!!

This may help: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/showing/

This really helped me prepare my oral presentation…thanks very much!!!!

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How to Give an Oral Report

Last Updated: February 1, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Emily Listmann, MA . Emily Listmann is a private tutor in San Carlos, California. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 69,956 times.

While the topic, content, and environment in which oral reports are given widely varies, there are some common steps you can take that will ensure you’re ready to give for an oral report of any type. After assembling the proper materials, practice extensively and edit as you develop the report to convey your points concisely. With a bit of preparation and a healthy amount of practice, you can give your report with both clarity and confidence.

Finding and Assembling Material for an Oral Report

• Initially, you just want to familiarize yourself with the topic. Most Wikipedia articles do a great job of including both the important facts and the tantalizing points of interest.
• Keep in mind that many teachers and professors won't accept Wikipedia as an academic source. These articles are great for familiarizing yourself with a topic. Once you know the basics, though, you will need to use sources such as books and journals for citations.

• Double check any sources you're unsure of or intend to rely upon heavily.

• Most of the content generated by Google Scholar will be firsthand research publications, which are the strongest form of reference there is.
• Don’t fall for the temptation to pepper your audience with as much info as you can fit into the presentation.
• Emphasize the one or two key elements of your presentation, and include further material only insofar as it supports those points.

• In particular, think about what a good entry point to the content of your report may be, considering your audience.
• Write down three different opening points, based on what will generate the interest of those you’re speaking to.

• For instance: “Hello, my name is __________, and today I’ll be talking about __________. My intention is to [share with / inform / convince] you [about / that] ____________. I will do so by first _______, then ________, and wrapping up with _________.”

• If you encounter a roadblock when organizing your material, think about what approach will most likely be understood by your audience.
• In general, address your simplest and most basic arguments first, and then move into your more complex arguments.

• You should verbally cite your sources if you followed their reasoning closely or if your report was based mostly on one or two sources.

Practicing and Fine-Tuning Your Oral Report

• Summarize subsidiary points into one word, if possible. This will ensure you do not forget them, but will also not be sidetracked by focusing too much on a tangential point.
• Include hard facts and statistics in your notecards too, especially numerical data, as it is beneficial to have these on hand for immediate reference.

• Save nuanced dialogue for a question and answer session, if one will be allowed. Hint at controversial or otherwise commonly contended points, and anticipate addressing at least one additional response to such a challenge if it is raised.

• While practicing, stick to the material you’ve included – tangents are confusing for the audience and will eat your time more quickly than you realize.

• As an example, a 10-minute oral report should be practiced to the point you can give it in 9 to 9.5 minutes.
• With such a time allotment, spend a maximum of 1 minute on your introduction, with 7 to 7.5 minutes on the body of your report, and 1 to 1.5 minutes left to conclude.

• Decide which visuals best suit your presentation based on their ability to support what you’re saying verbally.
• Try to keep your visuals clean and professional. An overabundance of colors, font styles, or showy effects and animations can distract from your presentation.
• In the visuals that you do include, default towards simplicity. If you’re including a graph, for instance, only plot the data and include the labels necessary to make your point, along with the source for the graph or data used.

• For a scripted oral presentation, know that a 10-minute presentation will likely run from 900 to 1200 words.

Giving Your Report with Clarity and Confidence

• Make sure your body language reflects engagement and enthusiasm by standing up straight and holding still, though comfortably so.
• Another benefit of making eye contact is that this allows you to gauge your audience. If faces are starting to go blank: slow down, speak more loudly, and give more illustrative examples of the points you’re making.

• If you’re nervous, you may wind up speaking too quickly or too softly without thinking about it. Stay aware of your voice and the speed with which you’re speaking.
• Smile. Not only will this help engage your audience, it’ll help calm you down!

• Try to prepare for questions in advance. Look over your report and find points of confusion and possible counter-arguments. Draw up a few points relevant to your anticipated questions so that you'll have them ready the day of your presentation.
• If, for example, you're presenting on financial planning to a group of college students, it's likely that many but not all of them will understand the difference between a 401(k) and an IRA. Write a notecard with the definitions of each just in case you get a question asking for clarification.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.gvsu.edu/ours/oral-presentation-tips-30.htm
• ↑ https://library.shsu.edu/research/guides/tutorials/googlescholar/index.html
• ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1857815/
• ↑ https://chem.duke.edu/undergraduate/oral-reports
• ↑ https://www.hamilton.edu/academics/centers/oralcommunication/guides/introductions-and-conclusions
• ↑ https://www.uow.edu.au/student/learning-co-op/assessments/presentations/
• ↑ https://urca.msu.edu/orals
• ↑ https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/think-pair-share
• ↑ https://www.uis.edu/ion/resources/oiai/oral-reports

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Organizing Academic Research Papers: Giving an Oral Presentation

• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Executive Summary
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• How to Manage Group Projects
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Essays
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Acknowledgements

Preparing for Your Oral Presentation

In some classes, writing the research paper is only part of what is required. Your professor may also require you to give an oral presentation about your study. Here are some things to think about before you are scheduled to give your presentation.

• What should I say?  If your professor hasn't explicitly stated what your presentation should focus on, think about what you want to achieve and what you consider to be the most important things that others should know about your study. Think about: do I want to inform my audience, inspire them to think about my research, or convince them of a particular point of view?
• Oral communication is different from written communication.  Your audience only has one chance to hear your talk and can't "re-read" it if they get confused. Focus on being clear, particularly if the audience can't ask questions during the talk. There are two well-known ways to communicate your points effectively. The first is to K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid). Focus on getting one to three key points across. Second, repeat key insights: tell them what you're going to tell them (Forecast), tell them, and then tell them what you just told them (Summarize).
• Think about your audience.  Yes, you want to demonstrate to your professor that you have conducted a good study. But professors often ask students to give an oral presentation to practice the art of communicating and to learn to speak clearly and audibly about yourself and your research. Questions to think about include, what background knowledge do they have about my topic? Does the audience have any particular interests? How am I going to involve them in my presentation?

Creating and Using Overheads . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking. 10th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations . Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations . The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills . Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Organizing the Content

First of all, think about what you want to achieve and think about how are you going to involve your audience in the presentation.

• Brainstorm your topic and write a rough outline. Don’t get carried away—remember you have a limited amount of time for your presentation.
• Organize your material and draft what you want to say [see below]
• Summarize your draft into key points to write on overheads and/or note cards.
• Prepare your visual aids.
• Rehearse your presentation and get its length right. Ask a friend to listen and time you.

GENERAL OUTLINE

I.  Introduction (may be written last)

• Capture your listeners’ attention . Begin with a question, an amusing story, a startling comment, or anything that will make the audience think.
• State your purpose . For example, "I’m going to talk about..."; "This morning I want to explain…."
• Present an outline of your talk . For example, “I will concentrate on the following points: First of all…Then…This will lead to…And finally…"

II.  The Body

• Present your main points one by one in logical order .
• Pause at the end of each point . Give people time to take notes, or time to think about what you are saying.
• Make it clear when you move to another point . For example, “The next point is that...”; “Of course, we must not forget that...”; “However, it's important to realize that....”
• Use clear examples to illustrate your points and/or key findings .
• Consider using visual aids to make your presentation more interesting [e.g., a map, chart, picture, etc.].

III.  The Conclusion

• Leave your audience with a clear summary of everything that you have covered.
• Don't let the talk just fizzle out . Make it obvious that you have reached the end of the presentation.
• Summarize the main points again . For example, use phrases like: "So, in conclusion..."; "To recap the main points..."
• Restate the purpose of your talk, and say that you have achieved your aim : "My intention was ..., and it should now be clear that...."
• Thank the audience, and invite questions : "Thank you. Are there any questions?"

Creating and Using Overheads . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking. 10th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations . Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations . The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Delivering Your Presentation

Pay attention to language!

• Keep it simple . The aim is to communicate, not to show off your vocabulary.
• Emphasize the key points . Make sure people realize which are the key points. Repeat them using different phrasing.
• Check the pronunciation of difficult, unusual, or foreign words beforehand . Write out difficult words phonetically in your notes.

Use your voice to communicate clearly

• Speak loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear you . This may feel uncomfortably loud at first, but if people can't hear you, they won't try to listen.
• Speak slowly and clearly . Don’t rush! Speaking fast doesn’t make you seem smarter, it will only make it harder for other people to understand you.
• Practice to avoid saying um, ah, you know, like. These words occur most at transitions from one idea to another and are distracting to an audience. The better you know your presentation, the better you can control these verbal tics.
• Vary your voice quality . If you always use the same volume and pitch [for example, all loud, or all soft, or in a monotone] your audience will stop listening.
• Speakers with accents need to slow down [so do most others]. Non-native speakers often speak English faster than we slow-mouthed native speakers, usually because most non-English languages flow more quickly than English. Slowing down helps the audience to comprehend your talk. 
• When you begin a new point, use a higher pitch and volume .
• Slow down for key points . These are also moments in your presentation to consider using body language such as hand gestures to help emphasize key points.
• Use pauses . Don't be afraid of short periods of silence. They give you a chance to gather your thoughts, and your audience a chance to think.

Use your body language to communicate too!

• Stand straight and comfortably . Do not slouch or shuffle about. If you appear bored or uninterested in what your talking about, the audience will be as well.
• Hold your head up . Look around and make eye contact with people in the audience. Do not just address your professor! Do not stare at a point on the carpet or the wall. If you don't include the audience, they won't listen to you.
• When you are talking to your friends, you naturally use your hands, your facial expression, and your body to add to your communication . Do it in your presentation as well. It will make things far more interesting for the audience.
• Don't turn your back on the audience and don't fidget! Neither moving around nor standing still is wrong. Practice either to make yourself comfortable.
• Keep your hands out of your pocket . This is a natural habit when speaking. One hand in your pocket gives the impression of being relaxed, but both hands in pockets looks too casual and should be avoided.

Interact with the audience

• Be aware of how your audience is reacting to your presentation . Are they interested or bored? If they look confused, ask them. Stop and explain a point again. 
• Check if the audience is still with you . "Does that make sense?"; "Is that clear?"
• Do not apologize for anything . If you believe something will be hard to read or understand, don't use it. If you apologize for feeling awkward or nervous, you'll only succeed in drawing attention to it and your audience will begin looking for it.
• Be open to questions . If someone raises a hand, or asks a question in the middle of your talk, answer it. If it disrupts your train of thought momentarily, that's ok because your audience will understand. Questions show that the audience is listening with interest and, therefore, should not be regarded as an attack on you, but as a collaborative search for deeper understanding. However, don't engage in a conversation with an audience member or the rest of the audience will begin to feel left out. If an audience member persists, kindly tell them that the issue can be addressed after you've completed the rest of your presentation and note to them that their issue may be addressed by things you say in the rest of your presentation [it may not but at least you can move on].
• Be ready to get the discussion going after your presentation . Professors often want a brief discussion to take place after a presentation. Just in case nobody has anything to say, be prepared with some provocative questions to ask or points for discussion for your audience.

Speaking Tip

Your First Words are Your Most Important!

Your introduction should begin with something that grabs the attention of your audience, such as, an interesting statisitic, a brief narrative or story, or a bold assertion, and then clearly tell the audience in a well-crafted sentence what you plan to accomplish in your presentation. Your introductory statement should be constructed so as to invite the audience to pay close attention to your message and to give the audience a clear sense of the direction in which you are about to take them.

Another Speaking Tip

Talk to Your Audience, Don't Read to Them!

A presentation is not the same as an essay. If you read your presentation as if it were an essay, your audience will probably understand very little about you say and will lose concentration quickly. Use notes, cue cards, or overheads as prompts that emphasis key points, and speak to the audience. Include everyone by looking at them and maintaining regular eye-contact (but don't stare or glare at people).

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Oral Presentations

Flipped learning module.

Each Flipped Learning Module (FLM) is a set of short videos and online activities that can be used (in whole or in part) to free up class time from content delivery for greater student interaction. At the end of the module, students are asked to fill out a brief survey, in which we adopt the minute paper strategy . In this approach, students are asked to submit their response to two brief questions regarding their knowledge of the module.

In this FLM, students are asked to complete a fill-in-the-blank outline which accompanies all three videos, covering the topics of oral presentation skill areas, preparation, and delivery. The completed outline will enhance the students’ note-taking skills and will serve as a summary of the FLM that they may refer to in the future.

oral/written communication, elocution, extemporaneous speech, oral retrieval, metacognition, visual aids, pacing, intonation, body language

Module Overview Oral Presentation Skill Areas Types of oral presentations you may encounter in your classes Key skill areas necessary for effective presentations Oral vs. written communication Oral Presentation Preparation Preparing on your own Working together with a group Creating slides and/or handouts for presentations Summarizing and Tips Pacing Intonation Body Language Download Video Transcripts

Worksheet: Oral Presentations Outline

• (Type 1) _________________________
• (Type 2) _________________________
• (Type 3) _________________________
• (Skill area 1) _________________________
• (Skill area 2) _________________________
• (Skill area 3) _________________________
• Similarities between oral and written communication are: _________________________
• Differences between oral and written communication are: ________________________
• Key points to consider when preparing for a presentation are:
• (Point 1) ____________________________
• (Point 2) ____________________________
• (Point 3) ____________________________
• Key points to consider when working with a group are:
• Key points to consider when creating slides are:
• Key points to consider when creating handouts are:
• Suggestions for practicing pacing are:
• (Suggestion 1) ____________________________
• (Suggestion 2) ____________________________
• (Suggestion 3) ____________________________
• Suggestions for practicing intonation are:
• Suggestions for practicing body language are:
• (Suggestion 2) ___________________________

Download Outline

Video 1: Oral Presentation Skill Areas

Oral presentation online activity 1.

What skills did you need in order to do this effectively? List at least three skills and explain why they were important.

What challenges did you run into? Describe at least one.

Was the speech or oral performance part of a larger writing or research project? How did the speaking inform the writing and research? And conversely, how did writing contribute to your oral expression?

What did you gain from the experience? List at least two things you learned from preparing and/or delivering the presentation, or two things you might do differently in the future based on your experience.

Submit your response to your instructor.

Video 2: Oral Presentation Preparation

Oral presentation online activity 2.

How do you imagine the speaker prepared for this talk?

Video 3: Oral Presentation Delivery

Oral presentation survey.

• What was the one most important thing you learned from this module?
• Do you have any unanswered questions for me?

Oral Presentation In-Class Activity

TED Talk title:

What does the speaker do effectively, and why? 1.

3.   What, in your opinion, could the speaker do more effectively, and why? 1.

Download Worksheet 1

Download Digital Implementation of the Activity

“ Designing Effective PowerPoint Presentations .” The Purdue OWL , Purdue U Writing Lab.

“ How to Convert your Paper into a Presentation .” Duke University Thompson Writing Program .

Pollard, Catriona. “ The Top 5 TED Talks on How to Give a Great TED Talk .” From Unknown to Expert .

“ Posters & Presentations .” Georgia Tech Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program .

See all Writing Program Flipped Learning Modules

Presentation vs Report Writing: What’s the Difference?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

I was sitting at my desk today while I stumbled upon a question by one of our patrons. It got me thinking if there was ever a difference between a Presentation and Report Writing? So, I did some research, and here’s what I found out!

The main difference between a Presentation and Report Writing is that a report is usually fairly extensive and gives a detailed account of the information on a particular topic. Whereas, a presentation is mostly a synopsis which highlights the key points that are important for the audience.

Since one of the key objectives of both – a presentation and a report is to give information to its intended audience, people often tend to confuse between the two. So, let’s understand the nuances in further detail.

Key Differences between Presentation and Report Writing

In order to make sure that we don’t end up creating an incorrect document the next we are tasked with an assignment, it is important for us to understand the differences between a presentation and report writing.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the purposes of both a presentation and a report is typically to provide insights or useful information about a certain topic.

However, the purpose of creating a presentation is to share information in a short period of time; usually not more than 15-20 minutes. Thus, it ends up being a synopsis of a topic rather than giving a detailed account on a particular topic.

Report Writing on the other hand goes into the intricacies involved within a particular topic.

For a research oriented report writing, the purpose of the report is often to capture the detailed account for the research conducted including (but not limited to) purpose of the research, methodology adopted for conducting research, observations and findings, discrepancies (if any), and the conclusion.

Writing a report often scientific approach and requires a technical understand of the subject.

2. Depth of Information

Another difference between a report and a presentation is the depth of information that is shared in the two types of documents.

As mentioned in the previous point, a report goes in great depth capturing the thought behind almost every single action taken by the researcher; thereby giving an in-depth understanding on the topic.

A presentation on the other hand picks up key pieces of information and aims to provide very specific details usually in the interest of the available time of the audience.

A typical example of a report would be a corporate annual report which explains the details of actions taken by the organisation and how it performed. This information is shared across multiple paragraphs usually accompanied by a table giving the performance details. Whereas, a presentation of the annual report only summarizes the key points on the performance of the company throughout the year.

3. Information Delivery

Another major difference between a presentation and report writing is the mode of information delivery.

Since a presentation is a piece of summarized information, it requires a person to share additional information while delivering the presentation. A presentation mostly contains visual cues along with a few points on each slide, which is accompanied with a talk given by an individual giving the presentation.

A presentation can be given in-person to a small group of people or even to a few hundred individuals in a large auditorium. Alternatively, a presentation can also be delivered online to several thousands of people across the globe using different softwares.

A report on the other hand doesn’t necessarily require to be presented. Since it contains detailed information, it can be independently read by people at their comfort.

Reading a report can take time as it is often spread across several hundreds of pages.

4. Method of Engaging the Audience

Yet another difference between a presentation and report writing is the manner in which it engages its audience.

A presentation depends upon the skill of the presenter to engage the audience. A person giving a presentation not only needs to make the presentation visually appealing, it also requires the presenter to entertain the audience by means of story-telling and humor (as deemed necessary) while delivering the presentation.

A report on the other hand depends on the capability of an individual to command a language to engage its readers. It needs the person writing a report to have a good grasp of the language in order to describe the information accurately and as briefly as possible while holding the interest of the audience.

In a research study done in order to compare the understanding capability of science students based information consumed in the two formats – Presentation versus Report format , it was observed that students understood the topic better when it was explained through a presentation rather than a report.

Perhaps, one can conclude that presentation is usually more engaging than a detailed report.

5. Skills Needed

Lastly, another difference between a presentation and report writing is the skills needed for each of the two activities.

Creating an effective presentation requires not only design skills, but also mastering the art of giving presentations! While the task of designing a presentation can often be outsourced, the knack of picking the correct topics to be covered in the presentation can’t be outsourced and is dependent on the presenter.

As a presenter, you don’t necessarily need to have great writing skills, but you surely need to know the art of story-telling, and leverage this for giving a presentation.

On the other hand, report writing requires creative (sometimes technical) writing skills. One also needs to be analytical.

How to Choose between a Presentation and a Report? Which is Better?

Choosing between creating a presentation or writing a report can be a difficult task for some. But, not being able to do so correctly can often lead to drastic (sometimes even embarrassing) circumstances.

Here are a few questions that you should ask yourself before starting creating a presentation or writing a report –

• How much time do I have with my audience? If you have only about 20 to 30 minutes with you audience to share the required information, it is perhaps better to give a presentation than to write a report. A report (unless written in less than 10 pages), will usually take more than this much time to be completely understood.
• Does your intended audience prefer to read or to hear/watch? People have their own preferences when it comes to consuming information. Some people like to read, while others prefer hearing or visual comprehension to gain knowledge. Be sure to ask them their preference, and make your decision accordingly.
• What are you good at – Presentation or Report Writing? If the above two questions are not important or if your audience doesn’t have a preference, a good way to start would be to focus on your strengths. Ask yourself – what are you more comfortable with? Is a creating and delivering a presentation? Or, is it writing a report? Make a decision based on your capability. A little introspection can definitely go a long way in helping you choose the right direction.

How to Create an Attractive Presentation?

If you end up deciding to go down the presentation route, then we’ve got you covered.

The main objective of this site is to help you create better presentations!

Thus, be sure to check out a few other posts on this website that provide little ninja tips on how you can make your presentations attractive in a few easy steps!

A good place to start would be by reading this post –

7 EASY tips that ALWAYS make your PPT presentation attractive (even for beginners)

Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any specific questions. We would love to help you create better presentations!

Final Thoughts

As we understood in this article, even though delivering a presentation and report writing have a similar objective of sharing interesting information, they both have their differences.

Knowing what mode of information sharing to choose can often be critical. Thus, I hope this post has helped you understand some of the key differences between the two and how to choose whether to create a presentation or write a report.

Group Presentations and Report Writing

This page contains ideas for supporting students as they prepare group presentations and write reports of their group activity. (Other pages under the Group Work heading discuss the benefits and challenges of group work more generally.)

Your students can learn from the experience and findings of other groups by having groups share the results of their work with the rest of the class through group oral presentations, poster presentations and group reports. If you use group writing, you can ask students to provide feedback on the reports of other groups, based on the specified marking criteria.

Presentations and reports might be about the key issues and findings associated with the group task, or the processes of group work – what worked, what didn’t work, and how the group could improve next time – or they might involve a combination of the two.

Helping students plan for group presentations

It's important to be extremely clear about exactly what you want to see in your students' presentations. Ideally, you will guide them around the most common pitfalls that could prevent them from producing high-quality work. A rubric with specific evaluation criteria can be very helpful as students decide how they want to approach the task. At the very least, you will need to tell them their time or word-count limitations and the degree to which you want them to rely on formal, scholarly sources.

You can also give your students some simple guidelines for giving group presentations, to enhance the quality of their future presentations both at university and professionally. You might like to give them the following questions on planning their group presentation. Allow them time in class to discuss the questions and plan their presentations. You might ask them to submit their question responses, so that you can provide some formative feedback before they present.

Student handout 1

In addition, you could provide groups with a checklist, such as the one below, to help them develop a thoughtful and engaging presentation.

Student handout 2

Griffiths University's Oral Communication Toolkit contains resources for you as you support your students in learning oral-presentation skills, as well as a number of handouts that students might find useful when preparing presentations. These include:

• Basic principles of effective communication
• A checklist to help students prepare for oral presentations
• Guidelines for giving seminar presentations
• A planning tool to help students structure their presentation
• Tips for speaking to an audience
• Guidelines for producing visual aids
• Guidelines for answering questions.

Supporting students in writing a group report

Writing a group report requires effective organisation, time management and communication skills. Students often find report writing on their own challenging, and group writing can be even more intimidating if students are not given some guidelines on how to approach it. Without guidelines, one or two students in a group often end up writing the group report, and this can create workload issues, and resentment when marks are distributed.

Support students in writing a group report by providing guidelines for structuring the report and dividing the workload – who will write what sections and take responsibility for tasks such as editing, proofreading and publishing.

Students' approach to a group writing task will depend on the nature of the task. One of the following three options may suit:

Option 1 – One student in the group writes the report on behalf of the group.

This option can result in the writer taking on too much of the workload. It may be suitable, however, if the non-writing members of the group have been given responsibility for other major tasks. The advantages include:

• Groups can choose the best writer in their group.
• The report will have a consistent style.
• The writing will take up less of the group’s time (although it is time consuming for the writer).

The obvious disadvantage is that students, particularly those who could improve their writing skills, do not get the opportunity to practise their writing. In addition, the report does always not benefit from the diverse ideas and experience of the group, and having one writer doesn’t in itself prepare students for a team presentation.

Option 2 – Group members write one section of the report each.

Students divide the task into sections. Each student writes one section, and then the group assembles the report by piecing the sections together.

This might be a suitable option if students are writing about their particular areas of research or expertise. Students may consider this approach more equitable. It also breaks the task down into more-manageable sections.

However, it does not require students to work collaboratively on the report in terms of developing its ideas and shaping its overall structure. Also, it may be difficult to link the sections together and make the report flow; some sections may require more time and effort than others; it may be difficult to coordinate; and students do not get the opportunity to explore other sections through the writing process. Like Option 1, this approach does not always allow students to draw on the collective ideas and diverse experience of the group.

Option 3 – Students write the report collaboratively and experience various roles

While this option may be more time-consuming, it gives students the opportunity to experience report writing as a staged process involving several drafts, revision, rewriting and, importantly, the giving and receiving of feedback.

The following handout makes suggestions for how students might approach a collaborative group report.

Student handout 3

Reporting on group processes.

When students review and report on the processes of group work, they reflect on their experiences as a group and understand better what makes a group work well together.

You can ask students to write their report as individuals or as a team (or perhaps a combination of the two). Encourage them to draw on specific incidents and examples and take an analytical approach (rather than a descriptive one). Instead of focusing on content, students should consider the group's methods and processes and assess their effectiveness. That is, concentrating on how the group worked as a whole rather than on individual members' actions.

Ask your students to reflect on their own individual role within the group: what their contribution was, what role(s) they played, how well they fulfilled their responsibilities and how they could work more effectively in groups in the future.

Use some or all of the following questions to provide a framework for students to report on the processes of group work.

Student handout 4

• Academic presentations: Group presentations
• Student Presentations in a large class setting
• Tips and Strategies Supporting Learners’ Oral Presentations

Aguilera, A., Schreier, J. & Saitow, C. (2017). Using iterative group presentations in an introductory biology course to enhance student engagement and critical thinking . American Biology Teacher , 79(6), 450-445.

Brady, C. & Jung, H. (2019). Group presentations as a site for collective modeling activity . Mathematical and Statistical Science Faculty Research and Publications. Marquette University.

Kawamura, M. (2019). Perceived difficulties in group presentations: Action research as an intervention . International Journal of Learning and Teaching , 5(2), 119-124.

• Active learning spaces
• Blended and online
• Brainstorming
• Case studies
• Flipped classroom
• Ideas for Effective Group Work
• Preparing for Group Work
• Reflective Listening
• Constructive Feedback
• Structuring Group Discussion
• Managing Groups
• Presentations & Report Writing
• Reviewing Group Member Contributions
• Identifying Group Issues
• Dealing with Group Issues
• Facilitating & Monitoring
• Questioning
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Oral Reporting

• First Online: 11 June 2020

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• Stefan C. Dombrowski 2  

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This chapter will offer a structured approach to oral presentation of findings including a discussion of the approach to evaluation, a discussion of the report’s findings, and then a presentation of the recommendations. It is intended to be generally, rather than rigidly, applied. Throughout the report conference, the psychologist will be flexible permitting time to address any questions the caregiver might have.

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Dombrowski, S.C. (2020). Oral Reporting. In: Dombrowski, S. (eds) Psychoeducational Assessment and Report Writing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44641-3_21

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Oral Presentation Rubric

About this printout

This rubric is designed to be used for any oral presentation. Students are scored in three categories—delivery, content, and audience awareness.

Teaching with this printout

More ideas to try, related resources.

Oral presentation and speaking are important skills for students to master, especially in the intermediate grades. This oral presentation rubric is designed to fit any topic or subject area. The rubric allows teachers to assess students in several key areas of oral presentation. Students are scored on a scale of 1–4 in three major areas. The first area is Delivery, which includes eye contact, and voice inflection. The second area, Content/Organization, scores students based on their knowledge and understanding of the topic being presented and the overall organization of their presentation. The third area, Enthusiasm/Audience Awareness, assesses students based on their enthusiasm toward the topic and how well they came across to their intended audience. Give students the oral presentation rubric ahead of time so that they know and understand what they will be scored on. Discuss each of the major areas and how they relate to oral presentation.

• After students have completed their oral presentations, ask them to do a self-assessment with the same rubric and hold a conference with them to compare their self-assessment with your own assessment.
• Provide students with several examples of oral presentations before they plan and execute their own presentation. Ask students to evaluate and assess the exemplar presentations using the same rubric.
• Students can do a peer evaluation of oral presentations using this rubric. Students meet in partners or small groups to give each other feedback and explain their scoring.
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