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How to Design Your English Presentation

Part of any Business English Course that deals with presentations will look at how to design or develop your English presentation.  How do you start?  What do you put into it?    In a Business English course this is the method or process that I would advise my students to use when developing their English presentation.  The method that I suggest using is to start at the result that you want at the end of your presentation and work your way backwards to the introduction.  This should help you to develop a concise and effective presentation that does not contain unnecessary information. This is not a new idea, but it is one that I taught my students before actually finding it in an English presentations text.

What result do you want from your English Presentation?

At the same time as you decide on the result you want you should also decide on who your audience will be and what to write for them.  As well, decide what you want them to know or do after participating in your presentation.  After this start with what is the end result you want from your presentation.  Is it just an information presentation where you want to impart data or knowledge, do you want them to make a particular decision, or do you want them to make a purchase from you.  There are other results you may want, so start with the end result that you want from your English presentation.  As I mentioned and as you probably noticed we will be working backwards in designing an English presentation.

Key Points for Your English Presentation Result?

When you have determined the result that you want you then need to think about what are the 3 or 4 key things you want them to know or think about in order to get the result.  The key points should come easily after you know what you want to happen after the end of the presentation.  These will be the points you bring up in your summary so that they are fresh in the minds of your audience.  By doing this you will limit the amount of information that you will need to add into the presentation.  You don’t want to use the shotgun approach when designing an English presentation.

Information needed to Support Your English Presentation’s Key Points?

After you have decided on the key point that you need it will be easy to decide or determine what information or data you need to support these key points.  Because you know the data that you need to include, you will not need to include excess information, thereby shortening your presentation and making it more concise.

The Finish of Your Freshly Designed English Presentation

You have designed most of your English presentation by deciding on your conclusion or result, determining your key points, and adding information to support your key points.  Now you only need to work on the introduction to your presentation.  You know the end result or conclusion, you have your key points, and your presentation now contains the data or information needed to support the key points.  So you can use these to write your Outline and Introduction, which should now be a ‘piece of cake’ (easy).

I would advocate using the process outlined above because it should make designing your English presentation easier.  It may seem to be against common sense by starting at the end and working your way to the beginning, but the end result will be a more focused English presentation which gets to the point without all the fluffy padding.  It will be less boring, and it will contain less useless information.  I hope you enjoyed this brief look at how to design an English presentation.

For more information on my English for Presentations Course go to https://johns-online-english.com/english-for-business-presentations/

For Business Course videos go to http://vimeo.com/user29962680 or http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7wrbiwHTkuMK85G0eanTg