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For many people, giving a presentation can be a fearful and daunting proposition, but this does not have to be the case. 'Nerves' are to be expected and can be used to your advantage. They fill you with adrenalin and promote a keen incentive to prepare thoroughly, and preparation is the key.
Here are a few simple rules that I always impress upon my students.
1. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them it and then tell them what you've told them. Stick to this and your presentation will always be coherent and clear.
2. Coherence and clarity need to be your watchwords, don't go off on tangents which may be interesting but not the point.
3 Written words are not the same as spoken ones, what reads well does not necessarily 'sound' well.
4 Practise your presentation in front of someone outside of your subject, they can help you not to use 'jargon'. Technical terms where appropriate should always be used, but 'jargon' needs to be avoided.
5 A presentation needs to stand on its own, without props. Props are there to enhance not to hide behind.
I love to teach presentation skills as I can help a nervous student who is dreading their ordeal to be transformed into a confident well prepared speaker, looking forward to the opportunity of presenting their work. I have had some lovely feedback from the work I have done such as the following from a student of mine who works in local government:
Hi Lindsey
Just wanted to let you know that everything went very well today :)
I enjoyed the whole experience and had a queue of about 10 people waiting to speak to me over the lunchtime!
The feedback I received from the organisers was fab, they said it was the best presentation out of all the commissioners they had worked with across London! That I had done a very good job of pitching high level strategic information at just the right level for people to understand.
And....they asked if they could use it as a model for future events!
So that was all extremely positive, thank you very much for your help.
Tazeem
