How to interact with the audience

1. Interacting with the audience

2. What do you think?
1. At the start of a presentation it is good to
ask open personal questions so that the
participants feel relaxed and get to know
each other.
2. If you are asked a question, reformulate it
to check if you have understood it correctly.
3. If you don’t know the answer to a question,
say so.

3. Areas
 Using questions
 Organising activities
 Question time

4. Involve your audience by
 asking questions
 suggesting exercises
 proposing experiments
 offering a quiz
 making them laugh.

5. Using questions
 Reducing tension –
action
 Using the time to relax
and think ahead
 Creating a friendly,
relaxed atmosphere
 Making the
presentation more
colourful and
memorable

6. Types
Binary questions
 Has any of you spent a longer time living abroad?
 Who agrees with this opinion?
Functions:
- getting used to participation
- conducting a quick survey to illustrate a point
Do
- keep it simple
- indicate and show how to respond

7. Closed questions
 What colour is your car?
 When did you start learning a second language?
Functions:
- introduce a topic
- illustrate a point
Do
- keep it short
- sweep the audience with your eyes and designate the
respondents

8. Open questions
 How could we improve quality assessment in
schools?
 What are the advantages to streaming?
Function:
- ellicit contribution
Do
- set a strict time limit
- ask the audience to work in small groups
- keep to a pre-planned outline

9. Rhetorical questions
 So, just how big is the market? Enormous!
 Am I a native speaker at all?
 What is the point then? English exists in
many different forms.
 The fact is, cheap imitations of our leading
products are flooding the market.
So what’s the solution? The solution is to
push for tighter controls.

10.  Functions:
- introduce new topic
- introduce and highlight main ideas
- focus a key word by repetition
- indicate the controversial nature of a point
Do
- use them in strategic places to emphasise info
- not make them too difficult/impossible to answer
- not use them all the time

11. Activities
1. Visualising
2. Creating ambience, getting to know each other
3. Reinforcing an idea by small group discussion
4. Movement (?)
5. Applause (!)
6. Singing (!)
7. Filling out forms
8. Stimulating competition

12. Handling the audience’s questions
Clarify aim of question:
 Clarify confusing message
 Professional remark, contribution even if contestable
 Argue with viewpoint
 Provoke presenter, show off
Ask for clarification/specification!

13. Procedure
 Understand the question: avoid anticipation
 Ask for clarification if in doubt
 Reformulate the question (TIME TO THINK!)
 Accept the limitations of your questioners: do
not degrade them
 Refer to parts of talk in response
 Make sure your answer is satisfactory

14. Strategies
Do
 find something positive in the question/
criticism
 avoid interrupting the questioner – long
elaboration takes the sharp edge of criticism
 say if you don’t know
 indicate source of info

15.  ask for time to think
 tell the truth
 disagree and argue but avoid saying ‘no’
 stay calm, show openness for criticism
 be brief and precise.

16. How to cope with agressive questions
 Ask back: force questioner to specify and structure
criticism.
 Open-accepting attitude
„I appreciate your point but …”
 Preventive approach
 Avoiding responce by throwing
in another topic
 Opening
„Are there any other viewpoints that
could contribute to the whole picture?”

17.  Journalist: „You have had many men in your
life …”
 Elizabeth Taylor: „I’d have preferred having a
lot of life in my men !”