Business Presentations - Part 2: Transitional Language & Summary

Welcome back to part two of our series on business presentations. Today, we're going to cover transitional language (moving from one point to the next), and summarizing your talk.
 Let's begin with....

 Transitional Language

After you've greeted your audience, introduced the topic and given the outline, you'll  move on to the "body" of your presentation - the subject in detail.

Let's look at the example greeting/introduction/outline from part 1 again.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I am Jason Broomes, founder and CEO of JLB Language Services. Welcome and thank you very much for attending my presentation today.

Today, I am going to tell you about my company. My talk will be in three parts and will be about 45 minutes.

First, I'll give you an overview of my teaching experience: where I've worked, the kind of lessons, I've taught, and so on. Then, we'll go into to the kind of lessons JLB offers, course fees, available payment plans, and meeting places. Finally, I'll give you a short demo lesson, and we'll finish with a 10-minute question/answer session.

In the "body" of your presentation, it's important to break up the information into "chunks" using transitional language. For example,

Okay, let's begin with my teaching experience. I began teaching sixteen years ago in Japan. I started with a large conversation school company (called 英会話教室 in Japanese) in Tokyo for about four and half years. I also started teaching my own private students and business English in that time. In 2005....

So, now that you know something about my teaching experience, we'll move on to the types of lessons offered at JLB. At JLB, we offer private tutoring, test preparation..........

 And those are the main services JLB offers its clients and the fees. Next, I'm going to do a short demo lesson with you. Please get into groups of four, and then.....

.....Alright, now that you've finished the demo lesson,  we'll now go on to the question/answer session. .......

Thank you, everyone, for all your questions and feedback. Before we end our talk, I'll just go over the main points of our talk.  


Transitional language uses at lot of time expressions (now, next, etc), "breaks" (So, Okay, etc), phrasal verbs, (move on to, go over, look into, etc) and main points are repeated a lot. It does add time to your presentation, but, it also makes sure the audience understands what you've said, and let's them take in all the information more easily.

In a presentation you basically:

a) tell people what you're going to say

b) say it, 

c) tell people what you've just said,

d) and, finally, repeat a to c

We'll now move on to....

The Summary

You should approach the summary of your presentation the same way as the outline. Break the information up into "chunks" so it's easier to take in.

So, we covered four areas of JLB Language Services' business.

First, you heard about my work experiences. Next, we looked at the courses we offer and the fees. Then, there was a short demo lesson. Finally, we had a Q&A session about the finer details of our service.

 I hope you enjoyed this presentation as much as I have. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. Have a good afternoon. 

The summary is done to reinforce what the audience has learned. Again, always thank the audience for listening to your presentation. 

Activity

Watch the complete version of Steve Jobs' 2010 iPad presentation, then answer the questions below.  Remember, for any listening exercise, read the questions first, then listen. 

The video is 90 minutes long. Feel free to watch five minutes at time. There's no time limit on any of the activities in this blog.

1/ What did you think of Mr Jobs' presentation? Could he have improved it in anyway?

2/ Was he a fan of netbooks (smaller, cheaper laptops)?

3/ How was the quality of his voice and his talking speed?

4/  Did the graphics help you understand the presentation?