Understand the context of your presentation

In order to understand the situation or context of your presentation, ask yourself the following questions:

· What is the broader concern underlying the need for the presentation?

· What primary issues underlie the presentation?

· How does your presentation relate to these issues?

· What will be happening in the organization when you make your presentation?

· How does your presentation fit into the organizational situation?

· If you are one of several speakers, what kinds of presentations will the other speakers be making?

· In what surroundings will you be making the presentation?

· What will happen in the situation before and after your talk?

· How does your talk relate to other participants' actions?

For example, delivering a presentation at a meeting of project directors is different from briefing other people in your team about what you've been doing. Making a presentation at a company picnic is different from delivering a presentation at the annual meeting of a professional society. Knowing the situation is as important as knowing your audience and your purpose. In many cases, situation will be inextricably bound up with questions of audience attitude and the way you shape your purpose. Audience attitude frequently results from situational problems or current issues within the organization, and what you can or should say in your presentation, your purpose and the content you choose to present may be dictated by the context surrounding your presentation and the perspective that your audience brings.

As a writer or a speaker, you must know your purpose.

You must conceive your purpose in terms of your audience's needs. Both written and oral communication often have multiple objectives. The main purpose of your presentation may be to report the status of a project, to summarize a problem, to describe a plan, or to propose an action, but your long-range objective may be to highlight or document important specific issues within the topic about which you are speaking and to further establish your credibility within the organization. You may want the audience to dislike another proposed solution, to desire a more comprehensive solution, or decide there isn't a problem after all.

As you plan, state your purpose in one sentence.

Then, as you begin your presentation, state your goal in terms of your audience's background and attitude; announce your purpose early in the presentation to prepare your audience for the main ideas to come. You may want to restate the purpose in words familiar to the audience.

Like the report or letter, the oral presentation must make its purpose clearly evident at the beginning. By knowing what they will be hearing from the beginning of the presentation, audience members can more easily focus their attention on the content presented and see connections between parts of the talk.

The effective presentation requires you to focus your audience's attention on what you are saying. A good way to grab your audience's attention is to develop a title that, at the very least, reflects the content of your presentation but does so in an interesting way. Like the title of a formal report or the subject line in a letter, memo, or informal report, the title of an oral presentation should prepare your audience for the content you will present. Therefore, from the beginning of the presentation, your audience is prepared for what you will say.

You may also wish to introduce your topic with an attention-getting device: a startling fact, a relevant anecdote, a rhetorical question, or a statement designed to arouse your audience's interest. Again, the device you choose will depend on the audience, the occasion, the purpose of the presentation.

Or, if your audience is not readily familiar with the subject, you may want to include background material to help them grasp and process your main points Tell your audience what points or topics you plan to cover so that your audience can sense and then follow the direction of your statements.

Organize your presentation

The structure of the oral presentation is crucial for one main reason: once you have spoken, the audience cannot "rehear" what you have said. In reading, when you do not understand a sentence or paragraph, you can stop and reread the passage as many times as necessary. When you are speaking, however, the audience must be able to follow your meaning and understand it without having to stop and consider a particular point you have made, thereby missing later statements. To help your audience follow what you say easily, you must design your presentation with your audience, particularly their listening limitations, in mind.

Audiences generally do not enjoy long presentations. Listening is difficult, and audiences will tire even when a presentation is utterly smashing. For that reason, as you design your presentation and select content, look for ways to keep your message as concise as possible. Don't omit information your audience needs, but look for ways to eliminate non essential material. Again, without carefully analyzing your audience's attitude toward the subject, its background, knowledge of the topic, and perspective toward you, you cannot begin to make accurate decisions regarding either content or design and structure of your presentation.

Ask yourself the following questions:

· Is your audience interested in what you will say?

· What are the main questions they will want you to answer?

· Which of these questions is most important? least important?

· Based on your purpose and the audience's expectations, in what order should you present these ideas?

Helping your audience follow your message easily requires that you build into your structure a certain amount of redundancy. That means that you reiterate main points. When you divide your presentation into an introduction, the main body, and the conclusion, you are building in this necessary redundancy.

In the introduction, you "tell them what you are going to tell them"

In the main body, you "tell them"

In the conclusion, you "tell them what you told them"

This kind of deliberate repetition helps your audience follow and remember the main points you are making. (Readers can "reread" text, but listeners cannot "rehear" oral remarks.) To design your presentation with planned repetition, you must clearly know your purpose and what you want your audience to know.

The introduction should clearly tell the audience what the presentation will cover so that the audience is prepared for what is to come.

In planning your introduction, be sure that you state your goal near the beginning. Even if you use some type of anecdote or question to interest your audience, state the goal of your presentation next. Then, state how you will proceed in your presentation: what main issues you will discuss. The main ideas you have developed during the research and content planning stage should be announced here. Generally, the introduction should end with a reiteration of your main point.

The body should develop each point previewed in the introduction.

In the introduction you state the main issues or topics you plan to present. Thus, in designing the body of the presentation, you develop what you want to say about each of these main points or ideas. You may want to present your ideas in a chronological sequence, a logical sequence, or a simple topical sequence. This method will help your audience follow your ideas if you are giving an informative speech, an analytical speech, or a persuasive speech. The important point, however, is that you need to demarcate and announce each point in the body as you come to it so that your audience knows when you have completed one point and begun another.

The conclusion should reiterate the ideas presented and reinforce the purpose of the presentation. It usually answers the question: "so what?"

The conclusion to the presentation should help the audience understand the significance of your talk and remember main points. At a minimum, you should restate the main issues you want your audience to remember, but do so in a concise way. Try to find a concluding narrative or statement that will have an impact on your audience. The conclusion should not be long, but it should leave the audience with a positive feeling about you and your ideas.

The conclusion reinforces the main ideas you wish your audience to retain. Remember: in the introduction, you "tell them what you will tell them"; in the body, you "tell them"; and in the conclusion, you "tell them what you told them." In a presentation which has covered numerous points, you should be sure to reemphasize the main points. But the conclusion also allows you to emphasize the importance of specific ideas, or you can reiterate the value to the ideas you have presented. In short, how you design the conclusion will depend on your initial purpose. A strong conclusion is nearly as important as a strong introduction, as both the beginning and the end will be the parts most likely remembered

Carefully budget your time, especially for short (e.g., 15 minute) presentations:

· Allow enough time to describe the problem you address clearly enough for the audience to appreciate the value of your contribution. This usually will take more than 30 seconds.

· Leave enough time to present your own contribution clearly. This almost never will require all of the allotted time.

Приложение № 7

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