Business English Presentations and Public Speaking

When you are giving a presentation, your job is to not only present the facts but also to give the reasons (why), the purpose (objectives) and the results. In a presentation, the language used is often very simple, much simpler than if we were writing. For example: Reason: We sold the land because we needed to release…

When we really want to focus the attention of our audience on an important point, we can use this “What ……. is ….” Look at these examples: We must cut costs. What we must do is cut costs. We need more reliable suppliers. What we need is more reliable suppliers. Loading Focussing attention

Presentations are more interesting if you use a conversational style. They are more lively and you establish a rapport between you and your audience. You can do this by using a question and answer technique – you ask a question and then answer it. Your questions create anticipation and guide your audience to your point…

ere are some ways of dealing with questions when you are the SPEAKER: When you don’t want to answer: To be honest, I’m not really the person to ask about that. When someone interrupts you: Sorry, could I just finish? When you finally understand what they want to know: Oh I see. So what you…

Here are some useful expressions for when you are making a presentation or talk, perhaps in a meeting or in a congress or perhaps more informally in a discussion around the coffee machine. Or, if you work at Google, over the table football or going down the slide  Are there any questions? That is all…

Sometimes you can only ask questions at the end of a presentation. In that case, you need to refer back to the point in the talk you need clarification on. Here are some useful expressions to help you do that: First focus on the point you want to discuss You talked about You talked about…

Sometimes you can only ask questions at the end of a presentation. In that case, you need to refer back to the point in the talk you need clarification on. Here are some useful expressions to help you do that: First focus on the point you want to discuss You talked about You talked about…

When we are talking to somebody, we don’t always understand everything they say. There are two useful techniques for dealing with this. Firstly, we can simply ask them to repeat what they said. Could you say that again please? I didn’t follow that. Could you repeat it? Secondly, we can ask them to say again…

Sometimes you want to soften the impact of what you are saying and give it less importance. Here are some ways to do that: Little The quality could have been a little better.The speaker should have spoken a little louder. Slight There is a slight problem we need to deal with.I have a slight doubt…

Emphasizing 2 Here is some more language to help you make your presentation more persuasive and make your points stronger : openly admit I openly admit that I have made mistakes.If they openly admit that they were at fault, they may get the public back on their side. totally agree I totally agree with what…

When we are giving lots of information, we often use visuals to give an overview. However, we often need to highlight only one or two key points or figures and then comment on them. Here’s some language to help you. 

When we talk about changes, we often need to point out how big or rapid these changes have been. To do this, we need to use adjectives. 

When we are giving a presentation, we often talk about changes. Usually we illustrate these changes with visual aids to show these changes. We need, however, to explain these changes. To do this, we need special verbs

It is important to state your purpose clearly at the beginning of your talk. Here are some ways to do this: talk about = to speak about a subject Today I’d like to talk about our plans for the new site. I’m going to be talking to you about the results of our survey. report on =…

When we really want to focus the attention of our audience on an important point, we can use this “What ……. is ….” Look at these examples: We must cut costs. What we must do is cut costs. We need more reliable suppliers. What we need is more reliable suppliers.

If you get your facts wrong. I am terribly sorry. What I meant to say was this.  Sorry. What I meant is this.  If you have been going too fast and your audience is having trouble keeping up with you.  Let me just recap on that.  I want to recap briefly on what I have…

In modern English, Presentations tend to be much less formal than they were even twenty years ago. Most audience these days prefer a relatively informal approach. However, there is a certain structure to the opening of a Presentation that you should observe. Get people’s attention Welcome them Introduce yourself State the purpose of your presentation…