How To Give a Talk

Some suggestions for anyone facing their first seminar

Dr Nick Brown, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford

Deciding what to say

Whatever you are presenting there will always be three components to your talk, an introduction, the body of the presentation and the conclusions.

The body of the presentation

Presentations are not a spoken version of a written document. Verbal presentations serve a very different purpose: they are a good way of persuading people or of demonstrating your own abilities. They are a poor way of giving information. Most audiences will not be able to remember much of what you have said, even immediately after your presentation, so keep the information content to a minimum. Facts and figures can always be given in a handout.

Try to identify a small number of key points that you wish to make. You can get these points across most effectively by repeating them a number of times in a number of different ways.

1. State the issue clearly;

2. Present some supporting evidence;

3. Illustrate the issue with a visual aid;

4. Describe a case study that is a real life example;

5. State the issue clearly again.

It is most important not to get bogged down in so much detail that your audience loses track of the point that you are trying to make. Keep in mind your audience’s level of knowledge. It is imperative to strike the balance between being patronisingly simplistic and going completely over their heads. Blinding your audience with science is not necessarily the best way of convincing them of your point of view or demonstrating your abilities.

Introduction

You need to catch your audience’s attention right at the start of your presentation. Be innovative but try to avoid being bizarre as this is likely to alienate them. An anecdote may help your audience empathise with you and gives them time to settle down and listen without missing anything crucial. Don’t begin with an apology (for being a poor speaker, poorly prepared, not knowing much about the subject etc). You will give them very poor expectations.

Conclusions

The aim is to stop talking in a way that leaves the audience feeling positive about your performance and with the key issues right at the front of their minds. It is often useful to summarise what you believe to be the key points you have made.

Preparing your notes

Different speakers need different sorts of prompts to guide them through their talk. If you write out the full script it ensures that you say everything you need to say, in the correct order and it can also act as a safety net in case you dry up. However, there is a very real danger that you are tempted to read the script aloud. Nothing is more likely to make your audience loose interest.

A list of bullet points can act as a useful aide memoire…… if you can remember what you had planned to present under each heading. If you are a confident public speaker and know your subject well this can be the most effective way of giving a more spontaneous presentation and engaging your audience.

I use a combination of script and bullet points. I write out the full script to make sure that I have got a presentation right, then I add a series of marginal headings to remind me of each part of the talk. If I dry up I can always have a quick look at the full text.

If you are using visual aids, mark in your notes where you plan to show them. You may also want to note how far you should be through the talk after each ten minute period. This helps you keep track of the progress of your talk as you give it and allows you to pace yourself much better. It will become obvious early on if you are running behind schedule and you will have an opportunity to catch up instead of over-running or having to finish in a rush.

Preparing for the talk

Get ready well in advance of the event. The better prepared you are the more confident your performance will be. Try to have your notes and visual aids ready a week before you give the talk. Read through your notes a few times and practice showing your visual aids in the right place. Try to memorise the sequence of ideas in your talk, not the sequence of words. Find a sympathetic group of friends who are prepared to sit and listen to a rehearsal and can check your time-keeping.

It is a good idea to visit the room where you are to make the presentation well before you are due to start talking. If possible, get someone to show you how to operate the audio-visual equipment and how to dim the lights. Sit in the back row and check that you can still see all the important detail on your visual aids. If you plan to use an overhead projector make sure that you know which way you need to place your overheads on the screen (stand with your back to the wall on which you are projecting and then place the overhead on the projector so that you can read it). If you will be using a data projector and a computer to show a PowerPoint presentation it is absolutely vital that you check that everything is working well in advance. Remember that different computers have different versions of PowerPoint loaded. This can lead to some dramatic and unexpected changes in your presentation. Should this happen you will need some time to correct these before you are due to start.

Work out where you are going to stand. Chose a place where the whole audience can see you but you are not obstructing their view of your visual aids. If you are likely to be very nervous find a table or podium to stand behind to give you something to grip. Try to avoid standing in front of a window. You will be silhouetted and the audience will be unable to see your face.

Make sure that you can see the time. If the room doesn’t have a clock, take off your watch and put it on the desk in front of you where you can check your time-keeping at a glance.

Giving your presentation

The key to good public speaking is to engage your audience. Everyone in the audience should feel that you are talking to them personally. Even the most disciplined of audiences will switch off very rapidly if they do not feel involved in your presentation. Here are my top 4 tips for ways to get your audience involved:

Maintain eye contact. Don’t hide away in your notes or stare at the floor. Pick a friendly looking person towards the back of the room and talk directly to them for 5 seconds. Then chose someone else. (This technique will also help you get your volume at the right level). Walk up to the front row and address each point in a list to a different person in turn. You will be amazed how this simple technique makes an audience sit up and listen!

Ask a question. Work out as you are planning your talk when and what you are going to ask. Try to anticipate an important question that may be in your audience’s mind. Don’t insist that they give you an answer, don’t select someone to answer, and don’t wait too long for a response. If you do you risk embarrassing and alienating your listeners.

Tell a story. Even the most serious and erudite of audiences loves to be entertained. Make sure that the story is a suitable illustration of a point that you are trying to make. An anecdote about how you accidentally solved a research problem might be appropriate where a crude joke would not. Plan your stories in your notes. Don’t expect them to come to you spontaneously. Stories are an excellent way of giving your audience a break. They are unlikely to be able to maintain concentration for more than 10 minutes at a stretch. After ten minutes of lecturing, stop for a while and tell a story.

Be enthusiastic. Your audience will be swept along with your enthusiasm. It is very easy to speak in a dull, inexpressive manner when you are feeling nervous. You may be struggling to keep your voice from squeaking but your audience will assume that your monotonous voice indicates how disinterested you are. Use body language and a variety of facial expressions to show how passionate you are about your subject.

Whilst you are talking try to avoid irritating actions. Many speakers stride about the floor, bang the table or jingle change in their pockets. I am told that I say “Okay?” far too often, at the end of sentences. These habits can be a serious distraction for your audience. If you have time to practice in front of friends then they can pick you up on these. It is VERY difficult to identify your own irritating habits since you will usually only do them when your mind is absorbed in other things.

One of the most terrifying experiences you can have when giving a talk is completely losing your train of thought. Actors call this “corpsing”. Your mind goes blank and you are rapidly overwhelmed by panic. As the silence drags on the panic gets worse and your audience starts to shift nervously. Firstly, be prepared for this happening. It can happen to even the most experienced speaker from time to time. Give the audience a big smile, tell them that you are momentarily lost and ask them to bear with you whilst you find your place again. They will almost certainly be very sympathetic. Go back to your notes and calmly remind yourself of what you should say next.

Visual Aids

Good visual aids can really make a talk, but bad ones can ruin it. Remember that if you show a visual aid this will immediately grab your audience’s attention. They cannot concentrate on what you are saying whilst they are studying your visual aid. Give your audience time to examine what you are showing them before you begin to load them with more information. If a slide contains a great deal of information it will take your audience a long time to absorb it. They will not wait for you to explain it to them. They will largely ignore you and will try and work it out for themselves. If a slide contains a great deal of text your audience will read this and will ignore what you are saying whilst they are doing it. The implication of this is that slides should be capable of being absorbed at a glance or you risk losing your audience’s attention for long periods.

Visual aids should be simple and clear. As a rule of thumb, slides should not contain more than twenty words of text or twenty numbers. Always make your slides as legible as possible. Go for boldness and clarity at the expense of information. Never use illustrations scanned from books or papers. They are invariably too detailed and drawn at too fine a resolution to make good visual aids. Redraw them in a simplified form using bold lines and strong colours. Graphs are more quickly understood than tables. Keep graphs simple by using a limited number of captions and rounding numbers to significant figures only. Make the curve prominent and the axes relatively inconspicuous. Use several simple slides rather than one complicated one. If you need to show a complicated figure try to build it up step by step – this is easily and effectively done using PowerPoint. Try to standardize the size and font of your lettering and use a limited colour palate. A standard format will help your audience identify the important information more quickly. Avoid red-green combinations. More than one in eight white males is colour blind and they will see very little. People with dyslexia may find that light coloured text on a dark background is easier to read. A dark background is also more restful on the eye and shows up dust and dirt less easily. Most people find it very difficult to read long lines of text at distance. There should be a maximum of about six words in any one line. Leave lots of space between lines. Never read text from a slide to your audience. They will read it themselves much more quickly than you can read it aloud and they will be irritated by having to wait for you to catch up.

Don’t use too many visual aids. Try not to show more than one visual aid for every two minutes of your talk.

And Finally…

When you next listen to a dreadful talk try to identify what is going wrong so that you can improve your own performance.

Good luck!