The document provides guidance on basic presentation skills. It discusses structuring presentations, overcoming public speaking fears, and avoiding common pitfalls. It emphasizes the importance of planning, preparing, practicing, and delivering presentations effectively. Key aspects include gaining audience attention, creating desire, using visual aids, maintaining eye contact, and practicing vocal techniques and non-verbal communication. Introductions should attract interest and tell the audience what will be covered.

1. Basic
Presentation
Skills
Presented By:
Akhilesh Kumar Dwivedi

2. Program Objective
• Understand how to structure a presentation
and deliver the content,
• Design presentations which are visually
appealing.
• Fine tune verbal and non- verbal behavior for
impact.
• Overcome the fear of Public speaking.
• Under stand common pitfalls of ineffective
presentation and avoid them.

3. “I always think a great speaker
convinces us not by force of
reasoning but because he is
visibly enjoying the beliefs he
wants us to accept.”
-W.B. Yeats

4. What is a good presenter?
“A presenter should be like a mini skirt:
Long enough to cover the vital parts,
and short enough to attract attention.”

5. Introduction
Presentations skills are important in general: quite
often during your study, and also later in your
career, you will need to use this skill.
Presentations can have different objectives:
• To inform,
• To sell something,
• To persuade someone, or
• To train people.

6. This is what irritates people during presentations
• the speaker was nervous
• the speaker was disorganised
• the speaker never looked at me
• the speaker had bad accent
• the speaker did not sound enthusiastic
• the speaker was monotonous
• the visuals were bad
• I was irritated by his/her clothing
• the speaker was speaking too softly
• the speech was confused; I didn’t know what
he/she was trying to tell me

7. Research by Harvard University suggest that:
“ For many people the thought of giving a public
presentation is more disturbing than the
thought of dying.”

8. Push yourself out of your comfort
zone
• The way we communicate has been learned over our
entire life. We do what we do because we are
comfortable that way . Often, however our comfort
zone limits us.
• In fact , any change or skill building requires that we
step out of comfort zone and try some new behavior.
• The first time we try something new, it may seem
difficult, but with the time and practice, we become
comfortable doing it.

11. 4P’s of Presentation
Presentation and public speaking skill is an art and anyone can master
this art with a preparation and practice.
To avoid any negative outcome the following aspects are important in
making a presentation:
• Plan
• Prepare
• Practice
• Present / Deliver

12. Plan
Some people think that they can deliver
effective presentations without planning.
But experienced presenter know that they need
to plan the presentation and anticipate
situations that may occur.

13. Benefits of planning your
presentation include:
• Polished delivery.
• The ability to give a presentation within time
limit.
• Anticipation of the audiences comfort.
• The ability to alter a presentation to meet
various needs.
• Reduction of technical problems.

14. To plan an effective presentation, you need to
determine its purpose and to determine the
purpose of your presentation , you should ask
yourself the following:
• Why this specific presentation?
• What should the participants be able to do or
understand after going through the presentation?
• How should the participants react at the end of
the presentation?

15. Prepare
This is the basic structure of a talk:
1. Introduction
2. Main part (body)
3. Conclusion
4. Question & Answer session
This means that you need to plan every part carefully.
Your presentation must tell a story. At this stage you are like a screen-writer,
someone who is writing a play.

16. Preparation at home
When you plan your presentation you need to answer the
following questions:
1. Who is my audience (how much do they know about my
topic?)
2. How am I going to organise my topic? (it needs to tell a
story)
3. How long should my presentation be? (you will have time
limits and you need to say everything within that limit)
4. What visual support shall I use? (PowerPoint,
transparencies, models, objects...?)

17. Putting parts together
Particularly if you are working in a group it is important that you put the
parts of your speech in a logical sequence. Your presentation needs to
tell a story and be told in a simple language so that the audience can
follow you. You will no doubt discover many ideas that you want to
include in your presentation but you must be selective. Include only
the information that is relevant to your audience and your objective.
Leave all other ideas out. What approach should you use? Formal or
informal? Lots of visual aids or only a few? But remember, your time is
always limited, therefore be selective.

18. Effective vocal technics include:
• Speed – It is rate at which you communicate
the message to the audience.
• Volume – The optimum volume depends on
the size of the room and the size of the
audience.
• Pitch – Pitch is the tone or the inflection in
your voice.
• Quality – Vocal quality is the overall sound of
your voice.

19. Non-Verbal Communication
Effective non-verbal communication includes:
• Eye contact
• Facial expression
• Appearance
• Hand gesture
• Posture

20. Visuals
Professor Albert Mehrabian carried out some
investigative research several years ago to find
out which factors most influence an audience
during a presentation.
The results showed that most what an audience
remembers are things they have seen.
The next important factors is the tone of voice
used by the presenter and least influential factor
is the actual content of the presentation.

21. The ratios are :
• Visual impact - 55 %
• Tone of voice – 38 %
• Text and Content – 7 %
Presentation Skills
60
50
40
30
Presentation Skills
20
10
0
Pictures & Everything they see Tone of Voice Text & Content ( Including
(Except Bullet Points) Bullet Points)

23. Practice
Practice is a vital part of preparation. You should leave time to practise your
speech two or three times and also practise with your group. In this way you will:
– become more familiar with what you want to say
– identify weaknesses in your presentation
– be able to practise difficult pronunciations
– be able to check the time that your presentation takes and make any
necessary modifications .
So practise, practise, practise! Prepare everything: words, visual aids, timing,
equipment. Rehearse your presentation several times and time it. Is it the right
length? Are you completely familiar with all your illustrations? Are they in the
right order? Can you give good comments to your visuals? How will you
answer difficult questions? Do you know the room? Are you confident about the
equipment? When you have answered all these questions, you will become
more confident .

25. Present / Deliver
As presenter, most of the attention is focused on
you – what you are saying and how you are
delivering your message. To be an effective
communicator you must use presentation skills
that promote a coordinated presentation.
Even a well organised presentation with
appealing visual aids can fail to reach its
objectives if the presenter’s delivery style is not
effective.

26. Presenter as an “Actor”
When you come to stand on the podium you become the actor of your
presentation. During your presentation you are going to speak and not read from
your notes. This means using your voice, and also your body language. What is
importnat is that you establish eye contact with each member of your audience.
Each person should feel that you are speaking directly to him or her. You need to
think in advance: Where shall I stand? How shall I keep eye contact? Where shall I
keep my hands? What if I get lost? How to manage audience phobia?

27. Introduction
Introduction is probably the most important part. The
Purpose of the introduction is “to tell the audience what
you are going to tell them”. You should remember that there
is no second chance for a first bad impression. If you start off badly
you will spoil everything.
During the introduction you need to achieve the following aims:
Gain Attention
attract Interest
create Desire
stimulate Action

28. Getting started - greeting the audience
What you need to do first is to greet your audience. Here are some useful phrases:
• Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
• Welcome to my presentation.
• It’s very nice to see you all here today.
• Can we get started?
• Let me say just a few words about my background...

29. Making an effective opening
There are several ways how to attract the audience right from the beginning. Think of
one of the following techniques to introduce your talk:
• Give them a problem to think about (Suppose you... Why is it that...)
• Give them some amazing facts.(Did you know that ...)
• Give them a story or a personal anecdote.(stories always atract
attention)
• Use a citation (if you want to start on a more philosophical note)
• Make a funny remark(but be careful with humour, not all jokes work well)
• Record a music piece perhaps (if appropriate for the topic)

30. Possible Introduction Scheme:
1. start with welcoming courtesies/introduce yourself
2. state the purpose of your talk, using one of the techniques
3. give a route map (tell them how long will your presentation take)
4. give the rules (do you allow to be interrupted or should your
audience keep questions until the end)

31. Some useful phrases
• What I want to do this morning is to …..
• My talk will take about 30 minutes.
• During my presentation, I’m going to be focusing on four main areas.
• I’ll be giving out copies of my transparencies at the end.
• If you have any questions, or comments you’d like to make,
please don’t hesitate to stop me.

32. Ending your talk
When you come to the end of your presentation you need to indicate this to
the people. Don’t just end up abruptly without giving a conclusion.The purpose
of the conclusion is to “tell the people what you have told them”.
Follow this scheme:
• summarise facts
• give recommendations
• give proposals
Thank the audience
Invite questions

33. Ending your talk : useful phrases
Wrapping up
• This brings me to the end of my presentation.
• Let me just run over the key points again…
• To sum up briefly…
• To conclude …
• As we’ve seen…
• So, my recommendation is ….
• I would welcome any suggestions.
Thanking the audience & Inviting questions
•Thank you for your attention and if you have any questions I’ll be pleased
to answer them.
• I’ll be happy to answer any questions.
• Are there any questions you’d like to ask?

34. Questions & Answers
“Does anyone have any
questions for my answers?”
-Henry Kissinger

35. Questions & Answers
• Beginning of a whole new interactive
presentation
• Opportunity to make a point
• Most presentations are won or lost
here

36. Questions & Answers
• Anticipate lines of • Don’t repeat negative
questioning questions
• Clarify question
• Rehearse
• Defer to experts
• Don’t rank questions
• Move your eyes off
• Keep answers brief questioner
• Be honest • If negative, end your
• Avoid negative words response focused on
somebody else

37. Instead…
• Look at the questioner.
• Remain neutral and attentive.
• Listen to the whole question.
• Pause before you respond.
• Address the questioner, then move your eyes
to others.

38. Easy as A B C
“I can’t Answer that
question Because …, but
I Can tell you…”

39. “Better to keep your
mouth shut and appear
ignorant than open it
and remove all doubt.”
-Mark Twain

40. Conclusion
Consider this in preparing your presentation:
• Simplify the text.
• Focus your material. You can’t say everything.
• Use transitions (signsposting) to move smoothly.
• Use examples, anecdotes, statistics to support your message.
• Use a lot of visuals to reinforce the message.
• Consider timing.
• Apply the KISS principle. KISS principle: Keep it Simple Stupid.
• Practise alone and with the whole group.

41. “Make sure you have finished
speaking before your audience
has finished listening.”
-Dorothy Sarnoff

42. Thank You..
42