A brief guide to help you delivering successful academic presentations.

1. The UK’s European university
INVESTIGATING THE
SOCIAL MIND / SUMMER
SCHOOL 2016
How To Deliver Successful Academic Presentations
Vanessa Dias (vcrd2@kent.ac.uk)

2. Contents
• The Structure of Oral Presentations
• General tips
• The General Introduction
• The Overview
• The Body
• The Conclusion
• The Chance for Discussion
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3. The Structure of Oral Presentations
• The general introduction
• The speaker greets the audience and introduces
him/herself
• The overview
• The speaker tells the audience what the topic of the
presentation will be
• The body
• The speaker talks about the presentation topic in
detail
• The conclusion
• The speaker lets the audience know that he/she is
going to finish the presentation
• The chance for discussion
• The speaker gives the audience the opportunity to
ask questions
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4. General Tips
• Body language:
• Restrict the amount of movements and gestures you
make
• Be comfortable and authoritative
• Make sure that everyone sees you
• Adopt a firm posture
• Nervous or Stressed?
• Stretches, relaxing meditation
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5. The General Introduction
• Who are you?
• What are you going to talk about?
• Examples:
• For the next ten minutes or so, I’d like to
give you some of the reasons why most
modern historians think the First World War
started.
• In my presentation, I’ll talk about four key
effects that acid rain is having on our
environment.
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6. The Overview
• What is your main topic?
• What are your sub-topics?
• Makes it easier for the audience to follow the
presentation and helps to give the presentation
a logical & clear flow
• Example:
• In my presentation today, I’m going to talk about images of
violence in the movies of Quentin Tarantino. I’ll start by looking
at Pulp Fiction, arguably his best-known work. Next, I’ll focus
on Reservoir Dogs and to finish off, I’ll consider Kill Bill.
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7. The Body
• Vary the tone of your voice
• Make pauses to create maximum impact
• Delivering an oral presentation in a monotone,
without pausing where needed:
• it will make your presentation lack sufficient
impact, and
• you will not succeed in getting the
audience’s attention
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8. The Body
• Narrow down your topic to no fewer than two sub-topics
and no more than four
• Leading phrases:
• So, for starters then, let’s look at…
• Right, to begin with, let’s look at…
• Ok, let’s start by looking at…
• Linking phrases:
• Now, I’d like to move on to the next part of my
presentation, which is how Hitler got the support of the
German people.
• Next, I’d like to look at my second point today: some of the
ways in which mobile phone technology has developed.
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9. The Conclusion
• When you reach the end of an oral
presentation, you should let the audience know
that you are going to finish
• Use suitable ending phrases
• Examples:
• Right then, as I hope to have shown this morning, it’s
clear that Scotland has many attractions for foreign
tourists. Now, does anyone have any questions?
• I hope you have enjoyed my presentation today. If
anyone has any questions, I’ll do my best to answer
them.
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10. The Chance for Discussion
• At the end of an oral presentation, it is polite for
the presenter to ask the audience if they have
any questions
• This gives people the chance to clarify anything
that they weren’t sure about or to ask the
presenter for extra information
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11. The Chance for Discussion
• There are 3 main types of questions:
• The ‘straight’ question
– “You mentioned that the monster is unlikely to be a
plesiosaur. Why do you think that is?”
• The ‘give me more’ question
– “Can you go into more detail about that?”
• The ‘I didn’t understand, so tell me again’
question
– “Can you explain about that again?”
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12. The Chance for Discussion
• Closing phrases:
• If there are no more questions, I’ll stop here. Thanks
very much for your attention.
• Does anyone have any more questions?
(no questions) In that case, I’ll finish my presentation
here. Thank you for listening.
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13. Reference
• Bell, D. (2008). Passport to academic
presentations: student’s book. Reading:
Garnet Education.
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14. THE UK’S
EUROPEAN
UNIVERSITY
www.kent.ac.uk