Starting and ending forcefully
The first few sentences and last few sentences of an oral presentation are particularly important because they shape the first and last impressions you make on your audience. They are also particularly difficult since they correspond to moments of transition (starting and ending) during which your stage fright is likely to peak. Thus, they deserve special attention.
At the beginning of any presentation, you must get the attention of the audience — and you must do so quickly. Whether audience members are still happily chatting or already silent (for example, because a chairperson introduced you), they are not yet engaged. As with a paper, you can spark their interest for your research by stating the need for your work, but you must first secure their full attention with an attention getter.
An effective attention getter can take many forms: It can be a question, a statement, an anecdote (humorous or not), an analogy, a quotation, an object, a picture projected on the screen, and so on. Whatever its form, it has three qualities:
- An effective attention getter is short. It is not a goal in itself, but rather a means to focus the audience's undivided attention on the need (which is the true motivation for the work presented).
- An effective attention getter is audience-oriented. It bridges the gap between something the audience is familiar with or cares about and the topic of the talk. As a counterexample, beginning a presentation by saying "My name is Irma Kodowski and I would like to talk to you today about . . . " is not effective, because it is strongly self-centered. Wait until the task to talk about yourself.
- An effective attention getter is relevant and appropriate, as opposed to out-of-place or overdramatic. As a counterexample, starting your presentation with a joke unrelated to the topic will likely strike the audience as irrelevant. Starting with a humorous anecdote directly related to the topic is at least relevant; whether it is also appropriate depends on the situation. Usually, less specialized audiences require more creative attention getters because they are more distant from the topic. For audiences of specialists, a simple link with a familiar context ("As most of you know, . . . ") or with the previous speaker ("As Dr. Chandrasekhar just pointed out, . . . ") may suffice.
At the end of a presentation, you must indicate elegantly yet unambiguously to the audience that you have said your last words, thus giving them the signal to applaud. Although there are many ways to do so, one that works well is to make the link back to your attention getter: By referring back to your initial question, analogy, picture, etc., you indicate that you have completed the loop. In contrast, beware of conventional yet extrinsic closes. "So, that's all I had for you today," suggests that you ran out of things to say; you should prepare a deliberate close instead. "Thank you for your attention," is weak; make your audience thank you for delivering a great presentation instead. "I will be happy to answer any questions you have," is premature; you should save this prompt for after the applause.
Your attention getter and close should be your very first words and very last words, respectively. Resist the temptation to preface your attention getter with filler words ("well, um, so, yes") or unnecessary courtesies ("Good morning everyone. Let me first thank the organizers for . . . "). To make sure you start and end your presentation sharply, you might want to learn your first few and last few sentences by heart.
Revealing your presentation's structure
Tobe able to give their full attention to content, audience members needstructure — in other words, they need a map of some sort (a table of contents,an object of the document, a preview), and they need to know at any time wherethey are on that map. A written document includes many visual clues to itsstructure: section headings, blank lines or indentations indicating paragraphs,and so on. In contrast, an oral presentation has few visual clues. Therefore,even when it is well structured, attendees may easily get lost because they donot see this structure. As a speaker, make sure you reveal your presentation'sstructure to the audience, with a preview,transitions, and a review.
Thepreview provides the audience with a map. As in a paper, it usefully comes atthe end of the opening (not too early, that is) and outlines the body, not theentire presentation. In other words, it needs to include neither the introduction(which has already been delivered) nor the conclusion (which is obvious). In apresentation with slides, it can usefully show the structure of the body onscreen. A slide alone is not enough, however: You must also verbally explainthe logic of the body. In addition, the preview should be limited to the mainpoints of the presentation; subpoints can be previewed, if needed, at thebeginning of each main point.
Transitionsare crucial elements for revealing a presentation's structure, yet they areoften underestimated. As a speaker, you obviously know when you are moving fromone main point of a presentation to another — but for attendees, theseshifts are never obvious. Often, attendees are so involved with apresentation's content that they have no mental attention left to guess at itsstructure. Tell them where you are in the course of a presentation, whilelinking the points. One way to do so is to wrap up one point then announce thenext by creating a need for it: "So, this is the microstructure we observeconsistently in the absence of annealing. But how does it change if we annealthe sample at 450°C for an hour or more? That's my next point. Here is . . . "
Similarly,a review of the body plays an important double role. First, while a good bodyhelps attendees understand the evidence, a review helps them remember it.Second, by recapitulating all the evidence, the review effectively preparesattendees for the conclusion. Accordingly, make time for a review: Resist thetemptation to try to say too much, so that you are forced to rush — and tosacrifice the review — at the end.
Ideally,your preview, transitions, and review are well integrated into thepresentation. As a counterexample, a preview that says, "First, I am going totalk about . . . , then I will say a few words about . . . and finally . . . " isself-centered and mechanical: It does not tell a story. Instead, include youraudience (perhaps with a collective we)and show the logic of your structure in view of your main message.
