How to give an Excellent Presentation (School Students/ College Students/ Professionals/ Teachers)?

Category: Motivation || Published on : 2023-08-18 20:55:15 || Author : Abhilash Modi 3 60607



While hard work and good ideas are essential to succeed, your ability to express the ideas and get others to join you is just as important. Many people find it too difficult to talk to people whether in a small or large group and as a result they try to avoid it.

If this thought makes you nervous you are not alone. Many speakers lack the skills and confidence to make effective presentations. We all have been victims of speakers who put us to sleep. Despite knowing how ineffective many speakers are many of us have found that, despite the best intentions, we haven't fared much better. We knew the topic and the ideas were written down, but the presentation still didn't go well. Was it the way you delivered the speech? Was it because the audience didn't seem interested?

Podium Panic - Everyone experiences stage fright, speech anxiety, or talking terror. Surveys show that fear of speaking in front of groups is one of the greatest fears people have. Some surveys find people actually claiming that the thought of giving a speech is more frightening than falling off a cliff, financial difficulties, snakes, and even death.

The following lists some techniques people use for overcoming this fright:
• Your audience understands your nervousness; they know what you are feeling and will forgive it; similarly, they will forgive honest mistakes.
• Nervousness is usually invisible; most will not notice the small changes in your voice or occasional mistakes; most speakers who describe themselves as nervous, appear confident and calm to the audience.
• Practice is the key. Be yourself; let the real you come through; relax, practice some deep breathing techniques: begin in your comfort zone; practice with friends; share your fears with friends.
• Begin with a slow, well-prepared introduction; have a confident and clear conclusion.
• The problem of poor communication is quite complex and cannot be solved by a single book, a course, and certainly not by this short guide, palpably we will point out the critical elements and questions to think about but still one has to make some efforts in order to see himself becoming a great communicator and presenter.


The approach presented here is predicated on the notion that there is a speechmaking process that involves a few basic steps:

Four basic steps
A. Formulate a strategy for the specific audience.
B. Develop a flexible, flowing structure.
C. Combine prepared material with an enhancing, not distracting presentation style; it is important to remember that how you present is as important as what you present.
D. Supplement the presentation with confident and informed responses to questions and challenges.


A. Strategy
• Understand your purpose and role: It is critical to be clear about your purpose in the communication. This involves knowing your audience, the occasion, and the expectations of your audience. Knowing the audience will be a critical determinant in what information is presented and how it is presented.
• Tailor your message to the audience.
• Understand their needs, desires, knowledge level, attitude towards your topic.
• Be concrete, specific, practical and relevant
• Clarify your objective. is it to motivate?... inform?... persuade? teach?
• Clarify what role you will be performing - coach? advocate? teacher?
• Develop a logically compelling presentation and think, how will it help resolve a pressing problem?
• Reach to a common goal/end.
• Research your topic as profoundly as possible.

In the classroom situation you may have to make a presentation about a topic about which you are not an expert in the working world and you will know a lot about the topic but for it, you will have to research the topic through many possible resources. Obviously, the internet is the best source of information. Google may assist you in your search.

B. Structure
Once you know what you want to say, you need to consolidate the materials into a meaningful message. You can't assume that the information will speak for itself. Your audience is capable of hearing your information in very different ways based on your organization and presentation.

The audience needs to have these basic questions answered.

1. Why should I pay attention to you when I can think about more interesting things?
2. Now that I am listening, why should I care about this issue?
3. I agree with the significance of the topic, but how are you justifying your ideas?
4. So, now that I am convinced, what do you want from me?

The following lists some points to think about while organizing your ideas.
• Begin by placing your topic in context: you might want to provide an outline or a road map.
• Provide the intended, expected benefits of the presentation.
• Organize the body of the presentation logically (make it easy to follow to go from the simple to the complex).
• When appropriate, plan ways to encourage audience participation.
• Maintain credibility and for it, you may include some experts’ advice who also have same notion about any particular topic like you do.
• Discuss the pros and cons.
• Conclude on a "high note" - include an overall summary in the last.
• Incorporate visual aids effectively - don't let process of presentation interfere with your message i.e. unnecessary animation from one slide to another.
• Prepare for contingencies--practice your presentation and rehearsal.
• Think about what might happen and prepare for it - what if the audience is more prepared than you expected... what if there is an unexpected question … if the disturbance is particularly intended. You may manage relieving the tension with a joke or humorous comment.

C. Style
Effective presenters recognize that communication is both intellectual and emotional. Organizing your ideas is part of the task. The another is to gain and maintain attention.

The following lists some basic techniques to maintain attention:
• Convey "controlled enthusiasm" for your subject - the audience will forgive a lot if the speaker is enthusiastic.
• Pay attention to posture and tone.
• Your audience will mirror your attitude so try to radiate confidence without preaching.
• Don't confuse enthusiasm with loudness; try to convey a range of emotions from concern, anticipation, excitement.
• Where appropriate, candidly discuss pros and cons.

Are you distracting the audience and drawing attention away from your message?
When we want the audience to focus on what we have to say rather than on us, it is important to think about anything that might detract audience from your message. This can be a sensitive issue since some of these factors are personal or part of who we are."

Regional accents or colloquialisms: If we are in an audience of people who share our "accent” no one will notice. However, if we are in a more general audience, your accent may make the audience focus on this rather than your message. This is not to say that you should abandon your ethnic or regional identity and individuality; however, you need to be aware of the impact of accents on audience.
Physical mannerisms: Speakers who pace, pound the podium, jingle change in their pockets, or do other things can drag the attention on themselves rather than the subject, sometimes this can be done for affect, but more often it is considered inappropriate and distracting.
Voice tone: Professional speakers generally emphasize the lower registers of their voices (both men and women) and avoid dramatic variations in the pitches of their voices (This rule can be broken occasionally).


Keeping your audience's interest
• If possible, try to provide variety and relief to the audience.
• Uniqueness may help the speaker to increase the impact.
• Alternative moving and standing still, speaking and listening, doing and thinking; use physical space and body movement to enhance your message.
• Try to add stories, anecdotes, testimonials, analogies, demonstrations etc.
• Use humour appropriately (sometimes in impression to make audience comfortable, we make them uncomfortable by our words or any other facial expression/body postures)
• Presentations are movies not snapshots; prepare the space for movement.
• Try to position yourself to enhance a great rapport with the audience.
• Eye contact is your primary tool for establishing audience involvement; look at your audience in random rotating order (pause and pan technique can be adopted).
• Use gestures naturally; do what is natural to you: some gestures are wrong - jingling change in a pocket, toying with notes, shifting from one foot to the other, any repeated gesture.

Once you obtain attention, you must retain it. Audiences members drift in and out, without giving complete attention all the time. You need to help the audience refocus periodically. The following are some examples:
• I will give the three basic reasons why change is needed.
• Transitions: now that we have analysed the problem, we need to look at the possible solutions.
• Conclusions: the discussion so far leads to this final thought.

D. Supplement: questions and challenges

Use of questions

• Ask friendly questions - don't use questions to embarrass or badger.
• Avoid asking tricky questions (questions that may imply lack of knowledge or intelligence).
• Make the interchange a mutually satisfying experience; give respondents time to think and phrase their answer; help respondents to save the things, they have said so far and then ask if anyone else has something to add.
• Don’t let respondent wander or attempt to take control of the presentation; a polite "thank you”. That's what I was looking for" can get you back on track.
• If extensive audience discussion is desired, avoid isolated one-on-one dialogues with specific individuals.
• When challenged, be candid and firm but avoid over responding.
• Maintain control of the session.
• Be firm and assertive without being aggressive or defensive.
• Don't let interruptions disrupt your composure.
• Avoid circumstances that require an apology.
• Anticipate questions and prepare responses; rehearse answers to some difficult questions which may be asked.
• If necessary, offer to obtain additional information and follow up.
• Use questions to strengthen your main arguments, answer questions candidly but positively.
• Avoid rhetorical questions - ask interesting questions that are thought provoking but not too difficult to answer.
• Ask some open-ended question with no right or wrong answers - encourage sharing experiences, feelings, opinions.
• Put "YOU" elements into questions - make them relevant to the audience's personal experience, prepare key questions prior to the presentation; it is difficult to think of good questions on your feet but it is possible.

Some guidelines for Answering Questions

• Anticipate Questions: think of the ten most likely questions and plan out your answer.
• Understand the Question: paraphrase it, if necessary: repeat it, if needed.
• Plan the Answer: particularly if you anticipated the question.
• Do not deviate
• Be Honest: if you can't answer the question, say so.
• Reinterpret loaded questions: try to show the similarity to other situations.
• Control Interchanges: if a questionnaire becomes a heckler, try to enlist the audience; if a questionnaire deviates, try to remind the audience of the goal of the presentation.
• Use the last question to summarize.

These are some the world's best suggestions of all time to be great at presentation and be a prolific and master presenter.



Comments

Divyansh Suwalka

2020-05-24 16:00:04

Sometimes while having very good or even out of the box thoughts upon a topic, we're not able to take our point of perspective. This article is a solution of this problem. Thank you! so much to write it.


Avantika tripathi

2020-05-20 10:23:21

Thank for this... m gonna use it.


Gourang Singh Padihar

2020-05-19 18:41:04

All aspects have been described precisely , whole article is well structured and easy to understand ,thanks for writing it is gonna help to many people and students like me.



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