Structuring a Presentation
You should by now be aware that the structure of your work is one of its most important features: like a house, a piece of work with a weak structure will collapse, irrespective of the quality of the material used.
- Your principal goal must be clarity
- You should introduce the presentation by signposting the areas that you will be covering
- Your main body of the presentation should be organised into a series of clear sections that follow logically from one to the next
- Your conclusion should draw together the arguments and material that have been adduced and leave the audience with a very clear memory of the information that has been communicated
In this sense, a presentation resembles an essay. However, the need for clarity and explicit signposting is even greater. Your reader can slow down, stop and go back in order to consider your points; a listening audience has no control over the flow of data that you are emitting. This means that it would be wise to state what you are going to say and what you have said more frequently and more directly than in written communication - perhaps at the beginning and end of each individual section.
Be clear about how long the presentation will last, and make sure that you ask your tutor for guidance in this respect. If the presentation is to last 5, 10 or 20 minutes, you should decide how much time you will be devoting to each section and then adhere to these guidelines in both rehearsal and actual performance.
Material adapted with permission from Guidelines for Making Presentations by Dr Daron Burrows, School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures