How To Make a PRESENTATION

SIGMA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERINGCOMPUTER ENGG. (B.E)(SEM – 1)

SUB : COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Prepared by :1.HEMIN PATEL (15CO35)2.HARSHAL PATEL (15CO04)3.JAYDEEP ATALIYA (15CO29)4.YASH JAIN (15CO33)

Guided by :HARDIK SONI

Planning a Presentation

A. Choose your topic B. Determine your purpose C. Gather information D. Develop an outline or write your speech E. Select visual aids F. Choose a title G. Practice

Depending on the type of presentation you are doing, you may do some or all of these steps. Speeches do not require visual aids, so you would skip step E. If you are giving an Impromptu Speech, your topic will be given to you and you will essentially just have to quickly map out the outline of your speech. With all types of presentations, however, time spent planning and practicing will benefit you greatly.

Analysing Audience and Locale

A nalysis - Who are they? How many will be there? U nderstanding - What is their knowledge of the subject? D emographics - What is their age, sex, educational

background? I nterest - Why are they there? Who asked them to be there? E nvironment - Where will I stand? Can they all see & hear me? N eeds - What are their needs? What are your needs as the

speaker? C ustomized - What specific needs do you need to address? E xpectations - What do they expect to learn or hear from you?

Research shows that communicators who understand their audience are more successful in achieving their communication goals. Understanding your audience can help you answer questions like:

1. How much do they already know about my topic? 2. What do they think about my topic? 3. What are their goals?

Make contact with your audience

One of the key challenges faced by the presenter is to establish links with her/his audience (a poor presenter appears to be speaking to an empty room). Making contact helps to maintain an audience's interest and encourages them to believe that you are genuinely interested in talking to them. You can make contact with your audience in a number of ways, including:

1. Eye contact 2. Gestures 3. Spoken contact 4. Your use of language

1. Eye Contact

Eye contact is part of everyday communication and an audience can feel uncomfortable if they are denied it. Making eye contact with individuals gives them a sense of involvement in your presentation and helps to convey your objectives on a personal level. Make sure that you share eye contact with all members of a small audience and all areas of a large audience. Regularly shift your focus around the room, not so that you look nervous, but to help involve as many people as possible in your talk.

2.Gesture

People use their arms and hands in every day conversation to add emphasis or to help describe events. Presenters will therefore look rather awkward if they keep their hands in their pockets or rooted firmly at their sides. Use gestures to welcome your audience, to add emphasis to your main points or to indicate an ending. Try to use open gestures which move away from your body, extending them out to your audience. This helps to break any audience/presenter divisions. Make sure that all gestures are controlled and precise; too much movement will appear nervous and unfocussed. Always watch against distracting your audience from the content of your presentation. You should continually be trying to find ways to help them listen and understand.

3. Spoken contact

Acknowledge your audience by making verbal contact with them. At the beginning of your talk ask if they can see and hear you, or check that lighting and sound levels on audio-visual equipment are satisfactory. During your presentation, ask rhetorical questions that you can then answer (e.g. “How do we know this was true?” or “So, what does this prove?”). At the end of your talk give the audience an opportunity to ask questions or to clarify detail— this encourages them to take ownership of your material.

The use of questions is an important tool. Questions involve your audience’s mind in a more stimulating way than simply asking them to sit and listen to your talk. Draw an audience in with clear, focused questions.

4. Language

Your use of language is particularly important in developing and sustaining a relationship with your audience. Try using language that involves your audience. For example, asking questions such as “What can we learn from this?” or “How did we arrive at this conclusion?” involves your audience in an exploratory process or discussion. When looking at visual aids, introduce them by saying “If we look at this slide we can see that ..” or “This slide shows us that…”. Use language that is welcoming and involving throughout your presentation.

Simple Outline INTRODUCTION I. Attention-getter: II. Central Idea: III. Establish credibility and relate topic to audience: IV. Preview the main points: IIV. Transition: BODY I. Main Point: (A declarative sentence about the first main idea for your topic) A. Supporting point 1. Sub-supporting point 2. Sub-supporting point B. Supporting point: 1. Sub-supporting point 2. Sub-supporting point

Organizing

1.  You might be called upon to report progress.  In that case, use the following structure:1.  Describe the issue or assignment, including why it’s important2.  Describe the critical outstanding problems3.  Prioritize them, and describe how they’re being addressed4.  Describe successes to date – positive progress made5.  Close with action steps

2.  You might be called upon to recommend a strategy.  For that situation, here’s a good structure: 1.  Define the objective 2.  Describe the current conditions 3.  Describe the desired state 4.  List the possible strategies, with pros and cons of each 5.  Identify best one, describe next steps

3.  You might be called upon to persuade your audience of the excellence of a particular product, service, or idea – a sales talk.  Here’s how to organize that one: 1. Frame the need that the product, service, or idea addresses 2. Describe the need in more detail 3. Describe the ways in which your solution addresses the need 4. Describe the benefits of buying in to your solution 5. Get agreement on a next step

4.  You might be called upon to choose among several alternatives.  Here’s the best way to present: 1.  Frame the situation 2.  Describe the criteria for success and prioritize them 3.  Describe alternatives 4.  Compare to the criteria and eliminate alternatives that don’t meet criteria 5.  Recommend best remaining alternative

5.  You might be called upon to teach a procedure or a skill.  In that case, proceed as follows: 1.  Frame the skill in terms of its importance to the audience 2.  Explain the skill or procedural steps involved 3.  Get the audience to try some aspect of the skill or procedure 4.  Review and summarize, including anything the audience did not try 5.  Describe what the audience can do on its own to acquire the skill or procedure

Manuscript Technique

In a manuscript speech, the speaker reads every word from a pre-written speech. This seems easy enough. Well, if your audience enjoys a bedtime story, it may work. Reading directly from the pages of a script has its benefits. You won't miss a single word or important fact. The downside? It can be boring. Without eye contact, animation or movement on stage, the audience may become disinterested. This is especially true if the speech is about a drab topic.

Advantages of Manuscript technique : 1. Extremely helpful when the accuracy of the message is very important. 2. No chance of forgetting the content as the entire text is in front of you. 3. If the speaker is well versed with the content maintaining eye contact would not be that difficult.

Disadvantages of Manuscript Techniques: 1. Difficult to build rapport with the audience in the absence of continuous eye contact.

2. Less scope to be spontaneous. 3. It is difficult to curtail the content at the last moment.

4. Not useful when speaking to a small group.

Managing the Question-Answer Session

Plan to take control The background work that you undertook whilst planning your presentation is the key to handling questions

effectively. If you have defined a precise focus for your presentation and have explored this thoroughly in your background research and planning, you are more likely to be able to respond to questions with precise answers. If you have been unfocused in your preparatory work, this will come across in the way you answer questions.

When planning your presentation, you will need to: identify when questions will be invited in your talk and plan to inform your audience of this; plan to leave plenty of time for questions so that the audience doesn’t feel rushed (this might involve having to

reduce the content of your talk); prepare prompts for questions that are open and straightforward: “That’s the end of my presentation. I would now

like to stop and take questions from the audience”. As a further part of your planning you may decide to: define the topics for discussion: “Have you any questions on the four principles that I’ve outlined?”; avoid answering questions that fall outside of the remit of your talk: “I’m afraid that really falls outside of my

objectives for today’s presentation. Perhaps we can resume discussion of that particular point later?”

Responding to questions

One of the main problems with question and answer sessions is that the presenter’s nerves frequently force an inappropriate response. This could be because a question has been misinterpreted or that only key words from the question have been heard rather than the full content. The following steps will help you respond more effectively to questions from your audience. Step One – Listen It is important to listen to all parts of a question before drawing premature conclusions about your ‘best’ response.

Frequently questions can change direction at the last moment, particularly if the questioner is thinking on her/his feet. This can throw you if you have already started to leaf through your material for the ‘appropriate’ response. Remember that questioners will frequently try to make a point whilst asking their question: “Surely a more meaningful interpretation of X is that it ....?” It is therefore important to both hear the content of the question and try to decipher the questioner’s intention.

Step Two - Understand If you are worried that you haven’t understood a question, clarify the area of enquiry before going any further. Check for

direct confirmation by paraphrasing the question back to the questioner “You want me to explain the process of …?” or check that your reply will be heading in the right direction “Do you mean in relation to factor X or factor Y ?”.

Step Three - Communicate and involve It is important to remember that even though you are taking a question from one member of the audience, as a

presenter, you are still responsible for the interest and engagement of the other audience members. This is particularly important in large groups as the audience will become bored if the presentation descends into a series of one-to-one discussions. To involve the rest of the audience (and avoid potentially extended dialogue with the questioner) make sure the whole audience has heard and understood the question by outlining the area of enquiry: “I’ve been asked to outline my thinking behind …”

Step Four - Respond When you reply to a question, direct your answer to both the questioner and other members of the audience.

Try to keep your responses as focused as possible. This will help keep them brief and preserve space for other questions. To avoid going into too much detail, stop and check back with the questioner to see if you have answered his/her query: “Does that explain why we chose to …?”.

Thank - You“Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.” - Brian Tracy