explaining, educating, convincing, or otherwise conveying information to them
Read the following tips for presentations
•a) Know your subject matter and your objectives •b) Know your audience •c) Write out your presentation completely or at least a detailed outline •d) Rehearse the presentation •e) Use the proper visual aids •f) Use easy-to-understand language applicable to the group you are presenting to •g) Use your personal experiences to help illustrate your points •h) Keep eye contact with the group •i) Gather feedback from your audience •j) End your presentation with a Question and Answer session.
Warming-up questions
• 1) Have you ever heard of presentation? • 2) Have you ever given a formal or informal presentation in English? Who to? What about? • 3) Did you enjoy the experience? • 4) What is a presentation?
Start-up 1) Describe some of your favorite products. Why do you like them? 2) What is the best thing you have ever bought? 3) Look at the following products, try to describe them by using the sentence pattern: It is _______________ (adj.)
Listening 1
Listen to a sales manager presenting a product to some buyers. Which of the adjectives below does sheant
stylish
robust user-friendly
Audio script
1. The best thing I’ve ever bought is my camera because I can look back at all my travels and the people I’ve met, and it brings back memories that I can enjoy all my life. 2. The best thing I’ve ever bought is a train ticket to Brighton because I met the love of my life as I was queuing in the buffet car. 3. Last week I bought some speakers for my Mac computer. They cost about £40, which is really good value. You just plug them into your computer and get sound as good as many hi-fis. This means I don’t have to buy a DVD player to watch films as I can do it on the computer and have a great sound. 4. My very expensive Prada bag. It was a luxury buy. I was attracted by its style and it cost me a lot of money, far more than I would have spent before, but it’s extremely well-made and I suppose you could say it’s a timeless classic, I use it every day. It looks good in every situation and for every occasion. 5. I bought a tree seven years ago for my son’s birth. It cost £30. now it’s a magnificent tree. Its leaves change colour with the seasons. It provides shade; it’s a home for birds. When it’s bigger I’m going to build a tree house for the children to play in.
Unit 2 Product Presentation It is not the employer who pays wages; he only handles the money. It is the ________ product that pays wages.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
attractive
high-quality
well-designed reliable practical flexible popular
Audio script
• This is our new product – a CD tower system. As you can see, it’s attractive and stylish. The tower is made of wood and it holds twenty CDs. Let me tell you its dimensions. It’s 33cm high, 18cm long, and 20cm wide. It comes in three colours: black, brown and white. And its selling price is just under £25 – a very competitive price. It’s ideal for storing CDs and CD-Roms. It has several special features which should appeal to our customers. Firstly it has a soft-touch mechanism. This means you just touch a button and the CD comes out smoothly and quietly. Another advantage is that it’s easy to select the CD you want because the title is clearly displayed. A very useful feature too is that it’s simple to use. You can open the CD case without taking it off its tray. The tower is well-designed. It’s robust, elegant and user-friendly. It’s very flexible – I forgot to mention that – because the towers are modular, so you can put one on top of the other. That’s a big advantage for people who have lots of CDs. And one other thing, you can save £15 if you buy two units instead of one. • I think the CD tower will be one of our best-selling products. It really does meet the needs of music lovers. It’s so practical, it’s a high-quality product, and great value for money. Are there any questions you’d like to ask？
Basic Presentation Structure
Introduction
Part 3 etc.
Topic
Summary
Outline
Conclusion
Part 1
Part 2
Inviting questions
The structure of the oral presentation is crucial for one main reason: once you have articulated a statement, 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 that you make as you move through your presentation. To help your audience follow what you say easily, you must design your presentation with your audience, particularly their listening limitations, in mind.