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3.6 Construct and deliver an oral presentation

Writing process

The main purpose of your presentation should be to pass on information or to instruct the audience. It will require thorough preparation and rehearsal of content and delivery. Use a range of different oral and visual techniques, and activities, to relate to your audience and communicate your message.

Your teacher may suggest using your findings from 3.7 Research as the basis for your presentation. In this case rework your material to include oral and visual presentation techniques.

Writing the content for a presentation follows a series of steps very similar to that of formal writing or research report writing:

1. Understand the purpose and the task.
2. Brainstorm and develop ideas.
3. Organise ideas.
4. Write your speech.
5. Edit for structure, ideas, and language techniques.

These notes will help you with the writing process:

1. Understand the task.
   Highlight keywords in the instructions and the task before you start writing. Understand the purpose, identify the audience, and identify the main skills to be assessed.
   
   
2. Brainstorm relevant ideas, in order to choose a topic.
   This is how you record all of your initial thoughts and ideas to help you select a topic. Your ideas may come from a discussion, an experience, a news story, an issue, a text, or a unique person or place.
   
   Gathering information and ideas
   Some topics may require you to research background information or to find facts and quotations to prove your point. Allow for this in your preparation time and find a range of appropriate sources to help develop and support your own thoughts and ideas. For help with research see 3.7 Research.
   
   Developing ideas
   Use your brainstorm and information you have gathered to find the focus or point of view of your topic. Point of view is the angle, opinion, or stance you have on your topic; it may be objective, subjective, or neutral. By finding evidence to support your ideas an angle or theme will develop and shape the direction of your presentation. Work on an idea or angle until you are fully satisfied that you have exhausted all possibilities and you are happy with your overall plan. Each ideas should be supported by a number of examples to help prove your point.
   
   
3. Organise ideas into a logical order to give your presentation an overall structure.
   
   Look at your introduction and conclusion
   Having an effective introduction will encourage your audience to listen to your presentation, help to set the tone and to introduce key ideas. Try using some of the following techniques to grab their attention from the start: rhetorical question, anecdote, music, role play, or gesture.
   
   A conclusion is more than just repeating the introduction, it should tie any lose ends together and leave a clear message with the listener. A strong conclusion will challenge the audience to think beyond the limits of the topic and may offer solutions, or recommendations.
   
   The middle or body of your presentation is where you develop and explore your main ideas. It is important to write your presentation in paragraphs so that appropriate ideas are grouped together and linked to guide the audience to your next point without confusion. Also use activities to help illustrate your points.
   
   Using a variety of sentence structures will help to add interest and emphasis to important ideas. Often parallel sentence structure (repetition of some words, patterns of language) is used to get the point across in a persuasive and memorable way. See the web page Repetition: patterns of three or four for an explanation. Contrasting ideas is another effective way to make a point.
   
   
4. Write your presentation out in full so you know how it will sound on the day and how long it will take to deliver.
   
   
5. Edit carefully so your presentation covers all your main points and has a clear structure.

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