1. The Frame 6.  Stating your purpose

2.  Introduction 7.  Signposting

3.  Effective openings 8.  Questions

4.  The presentation CONTENTS 9.  Summarize

5.  Survival tactics 10.   Playing for time

  4. The presentation Contents

1. Starting 2.  Changing topic 3.  Introduction of a visual

4. Explaining a visual 5. Highlighting 6. Changing the subject (Unrelated)

7. Going back 8. Considering a point 9.  Emphasizing a point

10. Generalizing 11. Talking about current trends

12. Talking about recent trends

13. Reporting what others say

14. Opposing first impression to reality

15. Presenting information regarding a subject

16. Commenting on different aspects

17.  Expressing the extent 18. Excluding an aspect or possibility

19. Adding 20.  Stating preferences 21. Bringing up an unrelated subject

22. Providing background information

23. Pointing out a problem 24. Returning to the previous subject

25. Linking two related subjects

26. Interrupting 27. Avoid an interruption

28. Preventing an interruption

29. Irrelevancies 30. Returning to the point

8.  Questions

1.  Good questions 4. Irrelevant questions

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2.  Difficult questions 5. Inviting people to ask questions

3.  Unnecessary questions 6. How to avoid answering a question

 

10.  Playing for time

1.  What to say when you're at a loss for words 2.  Words to fill in gaps

 GETTING STARTED

1. "THE FRAME"

Introduction of yourself and your company

Introduction of your presentation (Enumerating topics)

Your presentation

Summary

Questions

Conclusion

Ending

 

Effective openings

o Give them a problem to think about

o Give them some amazing facts

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o Give them a story or personal anecdote

  The "problem" technique

Suppose......................................., how would you...............................?

Have you ever wondered why it is that........................................? You have?

Well, if I could show you.........................................would you be interested?

How many people here this morning / afternoon / evening..............................?

Well, imagine.................................................Do you think that's possible?

 

  The "amazing facts" technique

Did you know that.....................? According to the latest study....................

Statistics show that......................

I read somewhere the other day that.................

You know,....................

 

  The "story / anecdote" technique

When I think about.................... I'm reminded of............................

Have you ever been in the situation where............................

I remember when............................

It turned out...........................

 

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 Introduction

Introduction of your self

Good morning/afternoon/evening, my name is John Brown I'm the international sales manager

I'm in charge of..............

I work for MR Consultants Ltd and I'm responsible for..........

MR Consultants Ltd. has made................and in this presentation I would like to show you........

Introduction of your presentation

My presentation will cover the following topics........ Today I would like to talk about the following points.....

My presentation deals with........

This morning I'm going to be

o talking about...................

o showing you.................

o taking a look at..................

o telling you.....................

o reporting on...............

So, I'll begin by

So, I'll start off by

o outlining...................

o making a few comments on..................

o giving you the right figures on.................

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o bringing you up - to - date on................

o filling you in on.........................

And then I'll go on to

o talk you through..................

o show in more details the...................

o make specific recommendations regarding....................

o discuss in more depth the implications of..................

o raise what I see as the main.........................

 

 

Stating your purpose

Enumerating topics

 

First of all, I'd like to outline the ..... Perhaps I should start off by........

One thing I'll be dealing with is..............

The basic message I'm trying to get through is........

I'd like to begin with saying that.......

I'd like to begin with......

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Let's start with........

To begin with......

Secondly I'll show you.........

Thirdly I'm going to talk about.......

And than you'll see the results of........

Finally I'll speak about.......

Last but not least......

To conclude ...........

 

Signposting

 You say   When you

To move on When you want to make your next point

To expand on When you want to give a wider perspective

To digress When you want to depart from your plan

To go back When you want to refer to an earlier point

To recap When you want to repeat the main points

To conclude When you want to finish your talk

To summarize When you want just to give the basics

To turn to When you want to chance direction

To elaborate on When you want to do a deeper analysis

 

 Survival tactics6

  You say   When you

Sorry, what I mean is .............. Have your facts wrong!

So, let's just recap on that Go too fast!

Sorry, I should just mention one thing

Forgotten something!

So, basically what I'm saying is..................

Are too complicated!

Sorry, perhaps I didn't make that quite clear

Are talking nonsense!

Sorry, what's the word I'm looking for?

Don't know the English word!

Sorry, let me rephrase that Sound wrong (Auto correcting)!

So, just to give you the main points here

Have no time!

 

The presentation

Starting

Let's begin with the first topic I'd like to begin with the first topic

I'd like to start with ...

To start with ...

I'd like to begin by thanking...

Changing topic

Let's turn to the next topic ... Now, let's move on to ...

My next topic will show you the.......

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This brings me to my next topic which is............(One topic related to an other)

Introduction of a visual

On this slide you can/will see the ............. If you have a look at this slide.........

This slide will show you ...............

Have a look at ..........

As you can see on this slide.........

Explaining a visual

If you take a look in the left/right-hand corner you can see that........

Just look at the top/bottom of this slide

As you can see in the right-hand top corner......

Highlighting

I'd like to draw your attention to......... If you look at it more closely, you'll see that.....

Changing the subject (Unrelated)

By the way....... That reminds me .........

Going back

As I was saying.... Let's return the subject......

To go back to what I was saying

Considering a point

Let's glance at this point : We have to consider the fact that ...

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An important consideration is that ...

Emphasizing a point

I'd like to emphasize /highlight ... I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that ...

Generalizing

On the whole, ... In general, ...

Generally speaking, ...

By and large, ...

All in all, ...

All things considered, ...

Overall, ...

As a rule, ...

Talking about current trends

We are at present witnessing /experiencing /going through ... The current trend is toward ...

Talking about recent trends

There's been a recent trend toward ...

Reporting what others say

It is said that ... ... is said to be ...

Opposing first impression to reality

At first sight ..., but if we take a closer look , we see that actually ...

It looks as if..., but if we take a closer look , we see that actually ...

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Apparently /seemingly..., but if we take a closer look , we see that actually ...

In theory, ... in practice, ...

In principle, ... in reality, ...

Presenting information regarding a subject

With regard /respect to ... As far as ... is concerned

Concerning /regarding ...

Commenting on different aspects of something

In many /all respects. In this respect.

In every respect.

Expressing the extent

To a certain /lesser extent. In most /many /some /a few cases.

Excluding an aspect or possibility

Excepting /except for ... Apart from ...

If we don't consider ...

without considering ...

Excluding the possibility that ...

Adding

I might add that ... I could add that ..

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In addition, ...

As well as ..., there is also ...

Not only ..., but also ...

Furthermore, ...

Moreover, ...

And another thing, ...

And what's more, ...

Stating preferences

I'd rather ... than ... I prefer ... to ...

I tend to favor ... as opposed to ...

... has an advantage over ... in that ...

The main advantage of ... is that ...

Bringing up an unrelated subject

By the way, ... That reminds me, ...

Providing background information

As most/some of you probably know, As you (may) know, a few years ago we ...

Just to give you the background on this subject ...

The situation now is ...

Pointing out a problem

The problem is ...

Returning to the previous subject

As I was saying, ...

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To get back to what I was saying, ...

Coming /Going back to what I was saying, ...

Going back to what I said before, ...

Getting back to my original point, ...

Linking two related subjects

... which leads to my next point This brings me to ...

... which brings up an important question. Should we ...

... which brings up an important point :

Interrupting

May I interrupt you for a moment ? I don't want to interrupt, but ...

Sorry to interrupt, but ...

Sorry to break in, but ...

If I may just interrupt you for a moment, I'd like to ...

Excuse my interrupting you, I'd just like to add that ...

Avoid an interruption

Perhaps I could return to that point later on ... If I might just finish ...

If I could just finish ...

If I can just finish ...

With your permission, I'd rather finish what I was saying.

With respect, I should like to finish the point I was making ...

If you would allow me to continue ...

If you would be so kind as to let me finish ...

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Preventing an interruption

There are 2 /several points I would like to make. First, I would like to reply to Ms Jones and then I would like to

comment on ...

Very briefly, ...

I'd just like to ...

Irrelevancies

Could you stick to the subject, please ? Let's not get side-tracked. The issue under discussion is ...

This isn't really relevant to our discussion. What we're trying to do is ...

That's all very well but I don't see what it's got to do with the main point of this meeting.

I see what you mean but you're losing sight of the main point

I take your point but can we please stick to the main subject in hand.

That's not the point. We're here to discuss ...

OK, that's enough. Let's get back to the point.

Returning to the point

Well I don't think we should discuss it further today. As I said before ...

As I was saying ...

Coming /Going back to what I was saying ...

Perhaps I could resume ...

If I may just go back to the point I was making ...

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If I could /may continue ...

Your question leads us back to ...

To return to the main point ...

Going back to what I said before ...

Getting back to my original point, ...

 

Summarize

Summarizing

To sum up, ... To summarize, ...

Concluding

Let me conclude by saying ... I'd like to conclude by stating that ...

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that ...

Allow me to conclude by highlighting /emphasizing /stressing the fact that ...

I would now like to conclude my comments by reassuring you that we are fully aware of the fact that ...

To end your presentation

To summarize / to sum up So, there seem to be 4 main points.......

To give a brief explanation

To cut a long story short..... In a word we can say that..........

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Briefly we'll say that.......

In a nutshell.......

 

Questions

Good questions (Thank people for asking them. They help you to get your message across to the others better)

Good point I'm glad you asked that

That's a very good question

Thank you for asking me that

 

Difficult questions (These are the ones you can't or prefer not to answer. Say you don't know, offer to find out or ask the questioner's opinion)

I don't know that off the top of my head I'm afraid I don't have that information with me

I wish I knew

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to comment on that

Interesting. What do you think?

Could I get back to you on that?

 

Unnecessary questions (You have already given this information. Point this out, answer briefly and move on)

Well, as I said Well, as I mentioned earlier....

I think I answered that earlier

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Irrelevant questions (Try not to be rude, but move on)

To be honest, I think that raises a different issue I'm afraid I don't see the connection

Sorry, I don't follow you

 

Inviting people to ask questions

I'll be very happy to answer to your questions If there are any questions feel free to ask them

Do not hesitate to question me about..........

If you would like to have some more information .......

Are there any questions?

You don't have questions, do you?( this is a joke of course!)

Playing for time

That's a very interesting /complex question. That's a difficult question to answer.

I'm glad you asked that question.

You have raised an important point there.

I'm sure you will appreciate how complicated this matter is.

Yes, indeed, as a matter of fact ...

Let me think a moment ...

I'd say that ...

 

How to avoid answering a question

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Well, it's rather difficult to say at present. I'm afraid I don't have enough information at my disposal to

answer that.

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to comment on that just yet.

I can't tell you off-hand, I'm afraid.

I'm afraid I can't answer that question, but you can check with Mr. X

I'm not really sure, I'll have to check on that.

I think we can leave the problem of ... aside for a moment, the real issue is ...

I don't think we have enough time at our disposal to consider all the implications/ramifications of this particular aspect of the problem.

I'd rather not answer that, if you don't mind.

What to say when you're at a loss for words

I can't think of the right word, but you know what I mean. I can't remember what it's called.

It's on the tip of my tongue...

It'll come back to me.

Words to fill in gaps

Well, actually, in fact ... You see, you know ...

Let's see now ...

How shall I put it ?

Last updated May 2003

(c)Copyright E.Roose

(Many thanks to David Kerridge, Nina O'Driscoll, Mark Ellis and Adrian Pilbeam of Longman Business English Skills whose books allowed me to created these WebPages. Books, cassettes and other material are

available on their web site.)

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