Chapter 6

Oral Presentations

Introduction

In the Health Sciences, undergraduate students are often asked to give an oral presentation as part of the assessment. This may involve planned presentations or short unplanned talks. Honours and postgraduate students are required to present their research in seminars in their Department/School. As graduates, presenting to groups is an integral part of the health professions. This chapter provides guidelines on the stages in preparing your presentation and practical hints to help you communicate effectively with your audience.

Planning your presentation

Like anything that is worthwhile, planning determines the success or failure of an oral presentation. You can be prepared by working through the suggested steps below.

Know the context

As pointed out in Chapter 5, to communicate effectively, you need to take into account the context: the purpose of your presentation and your audience. You will need to consider the following questions:

What is the purpose of your presentation? What do you want your audience to know?
- Establish an overall aim for the presentation. Before you start, sum up precisely what your presentation is about. Then, set objectives for the session to focus your talk. Your objectives must be simple or you will not have a clear message.
Who is your audience? What experience do they bring? At what level do you pitch your talk?
- Your relationship with your audience will determine the amount and depth of material you need to present. For example, if your audience has a sound background knowledge of any aspect of the material you will present, you need only provide a brief overview before going on to material that is new to the audience. In addition, you should consider whether or not you need to define key terms and concepts. Your audience and the situation also affect the style of language you use. If your audience comprises only classmates, it is appropriate to use a more informal style. On the other hand, if you are presenting at a research seminar, for example to an audience of academics or professionals, a more formal style would be appropriate (See Chapter 5).
What is the setting/environment?
- If possible, you should find out how many will attend the presentation. The size of the group affects the way you might organise the content, and the delivery style. For example, a smaller group allows for greater interaction with the audience, for example, by inviting questions during the presentation or by setting tasks for the audience.

Know the criteria for assessment

It is important that you plan your presentation with reference to the criteria for assessment. In general, assessment criteria cover two broad areas: content and delivery. Marking schemes also often include marks for quality of visual aids. An example of assessment criteria is given below. The guidelines provided in this chapter address these criteria.

Assessment criteria - Content
Content (5 marks)	Marks
Structure
Flow
Appropriate for audience
Enthusiasm/interest
Audience interaction
Total

Assessment criteria - Presentation
Presentation (10 marks)	Marks
Posture
Body language/gesture
Eye contact
Visual aids/overheads
Audibility/volume of voice
Rate
Fillers
Intonation
Fluency
Confidence/relaxation
Total

Adapted from Speech Pathology Effective Communication elective. Acknowledgement to Georgia Dacakis, School of Human Communication Sciences

Preparing your material

• Structuring the content: An oral presentation should be focussed and have a clear structure. Once you have completed the background reading/research for your topic, think about how you will organise the content. Like essays, formal talks have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The body constitutes the major part of the presentation. As for essays, you should prepare a plan for the presentation (See Chapter 7).
• Writing the text: Once you have established the overall structure of your presentation, write out the full text. You will convert this to notes at a later stage. Most presentations are heavily based on visual material, for example data from published research or, in the case of Honours or PhD students, your own research. Therefore, in writing the full text of your presentation, you should use any visual such as tables and graphs as a reference point.

The basic requirement for the introduction of an oral presentation is that it provides your audience with an overview of the content you will present. However, unlike the introduction to an essay, in an oral presentation there are no conventions concerning its structure. You can explore different strategies to make it as interesting as possible to stimulate the interest of the audience. You should also think about the level of background information that your audience needs.

The body expands on the plan in a step-by-step fashion under headings and subheadings to show the hierarchy of the information. In developing the body of the talk, you need to consider the organisation that will help maintain the audience’s attention and the relevance to your audience of examples and other details you include.

The conclusion sums up the key points you made in the presentation and formulates conclusions. These may include the significance of the material you presented or any outstanding issues. To add to the interest value for your audience, you may return to a question, statistic, or quote, and so on in the introduction/earlier part of the talk.

During this stage of the preparation, you should make a rough estimate of the weighting in terms of time you will need for each section.

• Preparing the visuals: In preparing visual aids for your presentation, including PowerPoint slides, you should aim to illustrate ideas as simply as possible. Therefore, you should avoid large slabs of text and using unnecessary design features that do not contribute to communicating your message clearly, such as too many colours or animations.
• Creating notes: As pointed out in Chapter 5, there is a difference between spoken and written language. Therefore, you need to convert the complete text you have written into notes for speaking. You notes may consist of short summaries of sections of the text, phrases, facts and, if appropriate, direct quotations. You can reduce these notes further by underlining/highlighting key words and phrases or writing these onto cards. You will use these as prompts throughout your presentation.

At this stage, you will need to allocate specific times for each section or each card. You will have the chance to trial these during the rehearsal stage.

Rehearsing your presentation

Rehearsing is crucial to the success of an oral presentation. Rehearsal requires you to focus on how you will communicate the content of your presentation to your audience. This includes such aspects as the flow of the presentation, the level of formality of the language you use, body language, and pronunciation. The following tips are provided to help you get the most out of rehearsal.

Be familiar with the material

It is important that you are enthusiastic about your topic and that you have a complete understanding of the issues/data you will present. This will enable you to speak with confidence and effectively answer audience questions. You should, therefore:

re-read both the full text and the summary notes/cards of your presentation several times.
if necessary, do follow-up reading on any points that you do not understand fully
carefully study material on visual aids, for example data, and check that what you have said in your notes is accurate.
practise with the equipment you intend to use . Note: you should not memorise your talk. Firstly, you may experience a mental block during the presentation making it difficult to continue. Secondly, a memorised presentation sounds stilted and does not allow you to respond to your audience.

Check your timing

One of the main challenges in an oral presentation is to communicate what you want to say within the allocated time. This stage of the rehearsal allows you to check whether the times you allocated in the preparation stage for the various sections of your talk are feasible. The following is a suggested procedure for your rehearsal.

Practise your presentation several times using these key words in your summary notes or cards as prompts and your visual aids. Note: You should not simply read through the notes aloud. Rather, you should practise presenting it as you would to an audience, for example, with the necessary pauses, signalling phrases, and so on.
As you rehearse your presentation, from time to time, check the clock. If you are under or over the allocated time for a given section, mark that in your notes.
Add or reduce material to the notes for your presentation according to the time check in the previous step.
When you have made the necessary changes to your notes, run through the presentation again to ensure that the revised version fits the allocated time. Consider what other changes you could make during the presentation if you are running out of time. Note that the real presentation takes longer than the rehearsed presentation.

Practise your pronunciation

A clear voice and accurate pronunciation are an essential part of effective oral communication. You should, therefore:

make sure that you can pronounce key words. If you are uncertain about correct pronunciation, refer to a good dictionary or, if you are an ESL student, ask a native speaker.
practise correct stress (the syllable within a word and the word/s in a sentence you emphasise) and intonation (the rise and fall of voice for making statements, asking questions, emphasising, and so on).

Anticipate audience questions

As marks are usually also allocated to your handling of audience questions during discussion time, you need to prepare as thoroughly as possible. The following tips are provided to help you.

Make sure you are thoroughly familiar with your material. Last minute review of your notes is essential.
Think about your material from an audience perspective. Try to anticipate questions your audience might ask. For example, they might ask you to: explain something you have not got the time to cover in depth, clarify a definition or concept, give an example of a general point you have made, summarise the advantages/benefits, and so on. Formulate responses in your head.

During the presentation

The ultimate success of an oral presentation depends on how you manage various aspects of the delivery. The suggestions below cover the main aspects.

Before you start

To ensure that the presentation goes smoothly, you should:

check the equipment. Allow enough time to get assistance with faulty equipment.
distribute handouts before you start your talk.
start on time, especially if another presentation is to follow yours.

Maintaining communication with your audience

In a successful oral presentation, your audience is engaged with what you are saying. This is possible if you maintain communication with your audience through:

eye contact: Do not concentrate on your notes, and try not to look at the same one or two people throughout your presentation. Maintaining eye contact also helps you gauge your audience’s reaction and, thus, make any adjustments that may be necessary.
body language, gesture: Look relaxed and comfortable. Show that you are enthusiastic about your topic and look as though you are enjoying the experience. In addition to voice, you communicate with your audience through appropriate body language and facial gestures.
maintaining flow: To ensure that your presentation flows, you need to signal to your audience when you introduce a new point is introduce, give an example, and sum up points. From time to time, you also need to recap key points made during an earlier part of the talk to help the audience follow your line of argument.
avoid using too many fillers, for example “um”. This can be done if you have rehearsed you presentation and have thought through what you are going to say at each point and how you will say it.
using questions: A simple technique for communicating more directly with your audience is to use a question rather than a statement to introduce a point. For example, instead of saying, ”This is important because …”, you could use the question, “Why is this important?” and then answer the question. You can also involve your audience by occasionally asking them to answer a question.

Coping with nerves

Even experienced public speakers get nervous before a presentation. To overcome nervousness, you should:

thoroughly prepare and rehearse your presentation. Lack of confidence can often be the result of a lack of familiarity with the material you are presenting.
try not to rush through your presentation, and speak more slowly than you normally would in a conversation. Pause between sections, and take deep breaths.
avoid standing in the same spot throughout the talk and try to look relaxed.

Monitoring your timing

Even though you may have rehearsed your presentation, your timing may be affected by something unforseen, for example, a problem with equipment, a late finish by the previous speaker, and so on. As you go through your presentation, keep an eye on the time and, if necessary, omit some material or summarise what you had intended saying in a particular section. This should not be difficult to do if you know your material well and if you have rehearsed your talk.

Answering audience questions

Even if you have tried to anticipate your audience’s questions, it is clearly not possible to predict them. You need to remember the following points:

Try not to look surprised by a question asked.
Avoid answering “I don’t know”. A more appropriate response would be to say, for example, “I haven’t had/didn’t have the chance to look closely at that; however, …”
If you have not understood a question, ask the person to repeat or rephrase the question.

Alternate Format

Chapter 6: Oral Presentations(PDF 86.3KB)