What is the first thing you should do in the conclusion of an oral presentation?

For many people, giving a presentation in public is often a nerve-racking and stressful situation, and it can be a true source of anxiety. And if you have to give that presentation in a language that is not your mother tongue then the pressure mounts—no matter how fluent you are.
People often think:

What if I draw a blank?
And what if I don’t know how to say a word in the non-native language?
What if they ask me a question and I don’t know how to respond?
And what if the audience is bored?

So before giving an oral presentation, the best thing you can do is apply and make use of certain techniques and resources to help you be prepared. With preparation and practice, you gain confidence. And eventually, you could even become an expert at public speaking! At Siens, we’ll tell you how to make this happen.

• First, we’ll go over the structure of a good oral presentation, including examples of professional phrases.
• Then we’ll give you a few resources that you can apply, such as non-verbal language techniques.
• Finally, a couple of recommendations.

1. Structure of a good oral presentation

Despite the fact that every country is its own little world, there are certain generalized cultural norms of communication. As such, an oral presentation usually has the following structure:

• Introduction: you introduce yourself and make a connection with the audience.
• Body: you state the main ideas (usually 3 at most).
• Conclusion: you conclude the presentation by reasserting your main theme.

IMPORTANT! To prepare these three points, first ask yourself the following: What’s the objective of my presentation? To inform or to persuade? Depending on the answer, you’ll be able to choose the right resources for your presentation.

Introduction

First, you’ll have to welcome the audience:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen…
Good afternoon everyone…
On behalf of [company name], I would like to welcome you here today.
I’d like to begin by thanking you all for your attendance.

It’s important, right from the start, to get your listeners’ attention and arouse their curiosity. They also need to understand why you’re the one giving the presentation and not somebody else, so it’s a good idea to personalize your introduction.
You could use the following resources:

• Tell a personal story/anecdote: I remember I was at a [place] some time ago, and…
• Share a surprising fact or statistic: 60% of people state that…
• Describe a situation: Let’s imagine that…
• Ask a question (rhetorical or not): How often do you…? How many of you…?
• Use a quote: [Author of the quote] once said…

After that, you should tell the audience who you are and what your position is:

Let me briefly introduce myself. My name is [your name], and I work for [company name] as the [your current position].
For those of you who don’t know me yet, my name is [your name], and I’m responsible for…

Subsequently, we recommend that you follow the SP-LOQ rule: Subject, Purpose, Length, Outlining, Questions.
Subject: Today I am here to talk to you about…
Purpose: The aim today is to give you [an overview of / some background of]… / My objective today is to inform you…
Length: I plan to speak for about x minutes.
Outlining: I have divided my talk in x sections / Firstly, I’ll give you an overview of… / Secondly, I’d like to describe… / Thirdly, we’ll take a look… / We will conclude with…
Questions: If you have any questions during the talk, please feel free to interrupt me / I’d be glad to answer your questions at the end of my talk.

Body

Before discussing the main ideas, you should state them first, to guide the audience:

I’m going to analyse…
I’d like to discuss with you…
I want to look at…

Remember to give examples, which make your presentation more compelling, and use images to make it more entertaining:

Our latest successful case is…
The project we are especially proud of is…
For example, …
A good example of this is…
As an illustration, …

… And use figures, data and statistics (which can be in the form of graphs) to confirm what you’re saying:

Based on our findings …
According to…
Our data indicates…
Here are some facts and figures.
The numbers here have increased / gone up / changed / gone down / remained stable.
I think the graph perfectly shows…
If you look at this table / chart / graph, you can see that…
I’d like you to look at this…

We also recommend that you use a good segue when moving from one idea to the next. Remember that all information is new to your listeners, and they can follow you more easily if you remind them of the order of presentation:

Another significant point is that…
Let’s now move on to…
This brings us to…
I’d like to go on to the next point…
Let’s look back for a moment…
I would like to draw your attention to this point…
I might add that…
Furthermore / In addition / Moreover…

Conclusion

Having reached this point, it’s important to state that you are reaching the end of the presentation, not only by using specific phrases but also your tone of voice. You should use the conclusion to bolster your main theme by briefly summarizing the most important ideas:

Let’s summarize briefly what we’ve looked at…
I’d like to recap…
To summarize my main points…
In conclusion, may I remind you…
The significance of this is…
This is important because…
We have to remember that…
It should be emphasized that…

Furthermore, if your objective is to persuade the audience, then this is the time to make a call to action.

Finally, we highly recommend that you use the conclusion to make the presentation circular: use the same call-to-action resource that you used in the introduction to re-connect with the listeners in the conclusion.

Questions and answers

At the very end, let the audience know that they now have the chance to ask questions or make comments:

I am sure you have many questions, I am ready to answer.
If there are any questions, feel free to ask now.
Does anyone have any questions or comments?

EXTRA TIP! What happens if they ask you a question to which you don’t know how to respond?
First, you can gain time by making an observation about the question while you think about how to respond:

That’s an interesting / difficult question.
I’m glad you asked that.

And if you don’t know the answer, it is always positive to comment on it and show interest in the topic:

I’m sorry but I’m not able to answer that at the moment, since I don’t have any statistics/details/data about this topic. Maybe I can get back to you later.
What do you think? Could you share with us some information about this topic?

2. Resources to put into practice

In this section we’ve provided you with a few tactics you can use in your presentation to make it original, but at the same time professional:

• Make use of visual resources—note cards to remind you of what you want to say, a PowerPoint or Prezi presentation for the audience, a blackboard for writing down ideas, etc.
• Be aware of your body language—remember to make eye contact with the audience (a good rule is “one thought = one look”), and adopt a comfortable body posture (feet parallel, knees relaxed, natural hand movements).
• Include pauses between each section. Regardless of whether or not the listeners are familiar with the subject, they need time to process the information.
• Have some “emergency expressions” or pet phrases available to gain time—Well, I should think about that / take a further look at this topic… / I’d really like to give you more details, but we don’t have much time left… / As I was saying…
• Modulate your tone of voice and ask rhetorical questions to get the audience’s attention.
• Speak clearly and slowly—Especially if you’re giving a presentation in your non-native language, the pace should be measured, which not only gives you time to think but also allows your audience to understand you better.

3. Recommendations from Siens Translation

To conclude, we’d like to leave you with a couple more recommendations to help you give a successful presentation.

At Siens, we know that the best way to tackle a subject is through good planning and preparation. Structure your presentation, organize your ideas, use the resources we’ve suggested above and most of all, practice!

Record yourself when you practice giving the presentation, and then listen to yourself. Make a note of the points where you sound more hesitant or uncertain, and change or revise them as needed. In case you are preparing a presentation in a language that is not your mother tongue, find out how to pronounce the words you’re uncertain about (the online dictionary https://www.wordreference.com/ is a good tool because it includes pronunciation), and as you get closer to the presentation date, try to make frequent contact with the language (watching a TV series, listening to the news or a podcast, etc.) so that your mind and ear are used to it.

Finally, would you like to view some examples of good presentations? We recommend the free, online platform called TED Talks, where you’ll find a wide range of presentations in various languages on an endless number of subjects.
Here’s the link: https://www.ted.com/talks