Tips for Giving an Awesome Oral Presentation

1. Content and Focus: Determine the most important points you want to convey to your audience and create the talk around these ideas. Leave out the rest- you can’t cover it all so don’t even try.

2. Organization: Outline the talk to give yourself a flowchart of ideas and a logical order in which you want to present them. Have your visual aids (see below) reflect the organization of the talk and guide you through.

3. Timing: Make sure you can give your talk within the allotted time. This is determined most effectively by doing a practice talk, alone or in front of friends. If you cannot finish in the allotted time, delete any material that is not necessary for understanding the major points of your talk. It is never a good choice to try to race through the information. If you find yourself unexpectedly in this position, quickly figure out what you can dump (skipping those slides) and give a summary. Besides-no one appreciates someone who goes on and on and on…

4. Introduction: Introduce the focus of your talk early so the audience knows what to expect. The introduction should give the importance and relevance of the topic. This is where you try to draw in your audience and get them excited to listen to the rest of your talk. And don’t start with an apology or remark such as “I hate to give talks so I hope this is OK.”

5. Body of the talk: Having introduced the topic, the body of the talk should give the specific information that most clearly demonstrates the main points you want your audience to learn. Each slide should have a main overarching theme or idea you want to deliver.

6. Conclusion: Be sure to give a concluding remark so the audience knows you are done. Ideally, a summarizing comment is good, reminding the audience of the relevance and importance that started the talk. However, at a minimum say “that is all I want to tell you today on ________.” The presentation will be followed by time for questions. Remember that you are the expert as this point so that answering questions will be fun!

7. Voice: Speak confidently and enthusiastically. The audience will be excited about your topic if you are! Make sure to project your voice so everyone in the room can hear you. Try to avoid looking down too much as your voice becomes harder to hear when you do this.

8. Pace: Speak slowly so the audience can understand and digest the information you are presenting.

9. Contact with audience: Make eye contact, smile, or use gestures that draw the audience’s attention. Jokes are always a good way to open up the audience. But mainly, showing your own enthusiasm is a sure way to excite your audience about the topic! Also, try not read your presentation; telling the story without having to rely heavily on notes impresses your audience with your knowledge of your subject.

10. Recovery: If you make a mistake or lose an your place temporarily, continue on. Don’t worry about it or apologize profusely. Also, you can’t know everything. If you are asked a question to which you don’t know the answer, just say “That’s a good question, but I don’t know.” You can offer a hypothesis if you have one, but don’t try to bluff your way through an answer and possibly say something incorrect.

11. Visual aids: These can help greatly to clarify or demonstrate a point. Use the chalkboard, overheads, or PowerPoint. With your visuals, avoid too much type- you want the audience listening to you and not reading your slides! Instead, use short phrases that delineate the major ideas and serve as a “trigger “ to remind you of the information you want to you to give. Also, think about using what I call “crutch slides”, ones that help you transition between ideas and introduce the next topic. For all of your visuals, use large font sizes. Use 24 point or greater so even the people at the back of the room can see them.

Computer projection: I have the computer projector available for anyone who wants to use it. You can email the file directly to me (preferable) or bring it to my office on a disk (CD, memory stick). Get your presentation to me the day before your talk so that we can make sure it works. It rarely works well to attach your own laptop to the projector so do not plan on this as a way to give your talk.