Language tips for oral presentations
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Language tips for oral presentations
Useful phrases to introduce your presentation
The aim of your introduction is to get the attention of your audience. Take a moment to welcome
your audience and introduce yourself before you begin. Introduce your presentation topic and give a
brief outline of what you will cover and the purpose of your presentation. Let your audience know if
there will be time for questions. You might like to start with a question, a joke, a photo, or a comment
that will make people think and pay attention to what you are about to say. The language of
presentations can be somewhat less formal than academic writing.
o Good morning and welcome. Let me introduce myself …
o Today I’m going to talk about …
o This morning I'd like to explain ...
o The purpose of my presentation today is to …
o First I will discuss … Secondly I would like to look at how … Lastly I will concentrate on …
o First I will look at … before moving on to … and then I’d like to talk about how this impacts
upon …
o If you have any questions please leave them until the end, when I’ll do my best to answer
them.
Useful phrases for the body of your presentation
Present your main points one by one. Take a moment to pause at the end of each main point to give
your audience time to absorb what you have said and to take notes. Use phrases to make it clear you
are moving to a new point.
Starting the presentation:
o Let’s start by looking at …
o I’d like to start by …
o So let me start by …
o The first issue is in relation to …
Introducing a new point:
o The next point is that ...
o Now I am going to talk about ...
o Moving on to ...
o I would now like to explain ...
o So that’s an overview of …
o Which brings me to my next point …
Language tips for oral presentations
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Defining key terms:
o In his 2013 article, Bardem states that …
o For the purposes of this talk, I will define … as …
Asking and answering rhetorical questions
o What exactly is … ? Well, … is a system for …
o Why do they regard this as essential? Well, firstly the data suggests …
Emphasising
o This is a significant point. If we look more closely at …
o This is a highly relevant question. Remember that Lamb’s theory suggests …
o This is crucial to understanding …
Providing examples or directing the audience to your presentation slides
o To give you an example …
o Now let’s look at …
o You’ll notice here how …
o If we look here, we can see how …
Useful phrases for the conclusion and audience questions
The aim of the conclusion is to provide a clear summary of your main points, indicate to your audience
that your presentation has finished, to answer questions and to thank your audience.
Concluding
o To sum up ...
o In conclusion ...
o To recap the main points …
o That concludes my presentation. Now, if I can just summarise the main points.
Question time
o Thank you. Are there any questions?
o Thank you for listening. Does anyone have any questions?
o I’m sorry, could you repeat the question, please?
o Yes, absolutely, I agree.
o Yes, perhaps that is true in some cases, however …
o No, I think I have to disagree with you on that point, because …
o That’s a really good question that I’m not sure I can answer right now, but it would be
interesting to look into …
