public oral presentation meaning

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Public Speaking and Presentations

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Public Speaking and Presentations: Tips for Success

This resource includes tips and suggestions for improving your public speaking skills.

Even if you’ve never spoken in front of a large group before, chances are you will encounter public speaking sometime during your life. Whether you’re giving a presentation for your classmates or addressing local politicians at a city council meeting, public speaking allows you to convey your thoughts and feelings in clear ways. Having the right tools can prepare you for successful public speaking and equip you with high-quality communication skills.

Know Your Audience

Different audiences require different modes of public speaking. How you address a room full of preschoolers will vary from how you address a group of professors at an academic conference. Not only will your vocabulary change, but you might alter your pacing and tone as well.

Knowing your audience also helps you decide the content of your speech. For example, if you’re presenting research to a group of scientists, you might not need to define all your scientific language. However, if you present that same research to a group of individuals who are unfamiliar with your scientific field, you may need to define your terms or use simpler language.

Recognizing the extent to which your audience is familiar with your topic helps you center your presentation around the most important elements and avoid wasting time on information your audience either 1) already knows or 2) does not need to know for the purpose of your speech.

Knowing your audience also means tailoring your information to them. Try to keep things straight and to the point; leave out extraneous anecdotes and irrelevant statistics.

Establish Your Ethos and Feel Confident in Your Subject

It’s important to let your audience know what authority you have over your subject matter. If it’s clear you are familiar with your subject and have expertise, your audience is more likely to trust what you say.

Feeling confident in your subject matter will help establish your ethos. Rather than simply memorizing the content on your PowerPoint slides or your note cards, consider yourself a “mini expert” on your topic. Read up on information related to your topic and anticipate questions from the audience. You might want to prepare a few additional examples to use if people ask follow-up questions. Being able to elaborate on your talking points will help you stay calm during a Q & A section of your presentation.

Stick to a Few Main Points

Organizing your information in a logical way not only helps you keep track of what you’re saying, but it helps your audience follow along as well. Try to emphasize a few main points in your presentation and return to them before you conclude. Summarizing your information at the end of your presentation allows your audience to walk away with a clear sense of the most important facts.

For example, if you gave a presentation on the pros and cons of wind energy in Indiana, you would first want to define wind energy to make sure you and your audience are on the same page. You might also want to give a brief history of wind energy to give context before you go into the pros and cons. From there, you could list a few pros and a few cons. Finally, you could speculate on the future of wind energy and whether Indiana could provide adequate land and infrastructure to sustain wind turbines. To conclude, restate a few of the main points (most likely the pros and cons) and end with the most important takeaway you want the audience to remember about wind energy in Indiana.

Don't be Afraid to Show Your Personality

Delivering information without any sort of flourish or style can be boring. Allowing your personality to show through your speaking keeps you feeling relaxed and natural. Even if you’re speaking about something very scientific or serious, look for ways to let your personality come through your speech.

For example, when Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announced in March of 2019 that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, he still let his trademark dignity and professionalism set the tone for his address. He began his announcement by saying “it’s in keeping with my long-time policy of being open and transparent with our Jeopardy! fan base.” Later, he joked that he would need to overcome his illness in order to fulfill his contract, whose terms required him to host the show for three more years. Though the nature of Trebek's announcement could easily have justified a grim, serious tone, the host instead opted to display the charm that has made him a household name for almost thirty-five years. In doing so, he reminded his audience precisely why he is so well-loved.

Use Humor (When Appropriate)

Using humor at appropriate moments can keep your audience engaged and entertained. While not all occasions are appropriate for humor, look for moments where you can lighten the mood and add some humor.

For example, just two months after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Reagan was in the middle of giving a speech when a balloon loudly popped while he was speaking. Reagan paused his speech to say “missed me,” then immediately continued speaking. This off-the-cuff humor worked because it was appropriate, spontaneous, and did not really distract from his message.

Similarly, at the end of his final White House Correspondents Dinner, Barack Obama concluded his speech by saying “Obama out” and dropping the mic. Once again, the humor did not distract from his message, but it did provide a light-hearted shift in his tone.  

Don't Let Visual Aids Distract From Your Presentation

Visual aids, such as PowerPoints or handouts, often go alongside presentations. When designing visual aids, be sure they do not distract from the content of your speech. Having too many pictures or animations can cause audience members to pay more attention to the visuals rather than what you’re saying.

However, if you present research that relies on tables or figures, having many images may help your audience better visualize the research you discuss. Be aware of the ways different types of presentations demand different types of visual aids.

Be Aware of Your Body Language

When it comes to giving a presentation, nonverbal communication is equally as important as what you’re saying. Having the appropriate posture, gestures, and movement complement the spoken element of your presentation. Below are a few simple strategies to make you appear more confident and professional.

Having confident posture can make or break a presentation. Stand up straight with your shoulders back and your arms at your sides. Slouching or crossing your arms over your chest makes you appear smaller and more insecure. However, be sure you’re not too rigid. Just because you’re standing up tall does not mean you cannot move around.

Eye contact

Making eye contact with your audience not only makes them feel connected to you but it also lets you gauge their response to you. Try to look around the room and connect with different audience members so you’re not staring at the same people the whole time. If you notice your audience starting to nod off, it might be a good time to change your tone or up your energy. 

Avoid distracting or compulsive gestures

While hand gestures can help point out information in a slide or on a poster, large or quick gestures can be distracting. When using gestures, try to make them feel like a normal part of your presentation.

It’s also easy to slip into nervous gestures while presenting. Things like twirling your hair or wringing your hands can be distracting to your audience. If you know you do something like this, try to think hard about not doing it while you’re presenting.

Travel (if possible)

If you are presenting on a stage, walking back and forth can help you stay relaxed and look natural. However, be sure you’re walking slowly and confidently and you’re using an appropriate posture (described above). Try to avoid pacing, which can make you appear nervous or compulsive.

Rehearse (if Possible)

The difference between knowing your subject and rehearsing comes down to how you ultimately present your information. The more you rehearse, the more likely you are to eliminate filler words such as like and um . If possible, try practicing with a friend and have them use count the filler words you use. You can also record yourself and play back the video. The more you rehearse, the more confident you will feel when it comes time to actually speak in front of an audience.

Finally, Relax!

Although public speaking takes time and preparation, perhaps one of the most important points is to relax while you’re speaking. Delivering your information in a stiff way prevents you from appearing natural and letting your personality come through. The more relaxed you feel, the more confident your information will come across.

What is Public Speaking? [Definition, Importance, Tips Etc!]

By: Author Shrot Katewa

If you are an ambitious professional, you will have to engage in some form of public speaking at some point in time in your life! The truth is, it is better to start with public speaking sooner rather than later! However, to better understand the subject, we must start with the definition of public speaking.

Public speaking is the art of conveying a message verbally to an audience of more than one individual. An average public speaker addresses a crowd of over 50 people, while some keynote presenters can expect an audience of a few thousand. With digital public speaking, this can be scaled infinitely.

In this post, you will learn everything you need to know to get started with public speaking, including why it is essential in the modern world, what skills make up the art form, and what you can expect when trying to turn your public speaking skills into a revenue-generating business or career.

Why is Public Speaking Important?

With over 77% of people having some degree of public speaking anxiety, according to Very Well Mind , and some positioning it as a greater fear than that of death itself, you might wonder why one needs to conquer such fear? What could be so essential about public speaking, after all?

Public speaking is critical because it allows you to connect with a group of people and persuade them to see things your way. It is the highest form of scaled influence and has existed as a change-making phenomenon in politics, society, and culture for over 2000 years.

Compare this to any social media platform, CEO-position duration, and professorship, and you’ll see that public speaking has been the most persistent form of influencing across time. In other words, it is transferrable and timeless.

You don’t have to worry about it going out of fashion because it has outlasted the fashion industry itself. Every other position of power relies on some degree of public speaking skills, even if an individual is not actively delivering keynotes.

What Are Public Speaking Skills?

At this point, you might be thinking, “wait, how is public speaking different from public speaking skills?” And I understand that because people often assume public speaking itself is a skill. Public Speaking is a performance art that relies on multiple skills to deliver a cohesive presentation of a singular skill.

Public speaking skills are the pillars that hold up an excellent presentation and include argument construction, audience engagement, stage presence management, timely delivery, and appropriate pacing. You can also improve your public speaking by using humor, rhetorical questions, and analogies.

Argument Construction

The way you position an argument matters more than the argument itself. That’s why in most rhetorical classes, you’re made to pick the “for” or “against” side at random, so you get good at making arguments regardless of the legitimacy of the position.

Usually, an argument follows the “problem,” “potential solution,” “reasons the said solution is the best” model though some constructions include countering general skepticism regarding a proposed solution.

Audience Engagement

This skill will help you lengthen your talk without having to script every second, but that’s not its primary goal. Audience engagement shouldn’t be used as fluff but as a means to retain your public’s attention, especially if a topic is particularly dry or the talk is too long.

Stage Presence Management

This is the aspect of audience engagement that has more to do with yourself. For instance, if you ask a question, you’re getting your audience’s attention by engaging with them.

However, if you strike a particular pose, make an exaggerated gesture, or simply carry yourself in a way that draws attention, you’re managing your stage presence (and increasing your audience’s involvement).

Timely Delivery

Timing is critical in public speaking because, given the fact that speechwriters exist, one can get away without constructing an argument or even writing the words to their talk. However, you cannot get away with bad delivery because if you don’t hold your audience’s attention, you’re only speaking to yourself.

Appropriate Pacing

Pacing your talk is essential because you cannot dump data on your audience without producing a cognitive overload. That’s why you must balance information with rhetoric and pace your presentation to bring your audience along with you.

Importance of Public Speaking Skills for Students

Whether you’re a student thinking of joining a public speaking club or a debating society, or a teacher looking to introduce your students to public speaking, knowing that it is an extracurricular art form that brings the greatest number of long-term benefits to students can be quite comforting.

The importance of public speaking for students lies in its cognitive benefits and social significance. Students who learn public speaking are more confident, can communicate their ideas better, and use speaking as a tool to polish their thoughts. This sets them up for success in public-facing roles.

More importantly, these benefits go hand-in-hand with long-term career success and social satisfaction because, unlike academic skills, public speaking expertise remains beneficial even after students say goodbye to their respective universities.

Benefits of Public Speaking

As mentioned above, the benefits of public speaking often outlast the student life and remain relevant to personal success. Whether you choose a corporate job or want to be a full-time speaker, you will be able to take the skills you build as a speaker and apply them to your life.

Benefits of public speaking include but aren’t limited to higher self-confidence, clarity of thought, personal satisfaction with one’s ability to communicate, a larger network, some degree of organic celebrity status, and higher levels of charisma.

Higher Self-Confidence

Self-confidence, as essential as it is, is a tricky subject because it relies entirely on one’s self-image. And if you don’t view yourself as confident, you aren’t confident.

The best way to improve your confidence is to observe yourself being confident : i.e., get into an activity that requires confidence. Given that oratory is one of the earliest art forms developed by humans, we can safely assume that it is also the one that has more inherent prestige involved.

Clarity of Thought

Public speaking forces one to learn new words and improves how one structures an argument. Since speaking also allows us to think and formulate thoughts into full-fledged concepts, a public speaker is better able to think with clarity.

Improved Ability to Communicate

Building on clarity of thought, one’s ability to communicate is enhanced once they have thought through their positions and arguments. Public speaking helps you communicate better in both the content and delivery of your thoughts.

Better Network

Humans are social animals, and networking is intrinsic to our success. They say that most of life’s significant events aren’t “what” events (as in “what happened?”) but “who” events (as in “who did you connect with?” or “who connected with you?”). Public speaking affords you the confidence to multiply the odds of better “who” events.

Natural Celebrity

We admire those who can do what we can’t. And since public speaking is such a valuable artform regarding which over 77% of people have trouble, it is pretty straightforward to conclude that the one who can pull this off will have higher social status among any group.

Increased Charisma

Finally, building on the previous perk of better social status, with Olivia Fox-Cabane’s definition of charisma as power and empathy, one can see how an organic celebrity status among one’s friend circle can also lead to improved charisma.

That said, not every public speaker is charismatic all the time. And to make sure you make the most of your ability to be charismatic as a public speaker, check out Fox Cabane’s book .

Types of Public Speaking

In the artform’s infancy, public speaking was public speaking. There was nothing else but an individual speaking to fellow city residents in a forum, trying to persuade them to get behind a certain reform or rollback one. Now public speaking has branched into various types.

Types of public speaking are divided across two dimensions: medium and mission .

Digital public speaking, on-stage speeches, and pre-recorded talks are three types differentiated by category. Keynote address, seminar, and debate are three forms differentiated by end-result.

• Division by medium allows us to see the type of speech by the method of delivery. You can conduct keynote, seminar, and debate in the digital type, but a live discussion is very likely off the table when you’re uploading a pre-recorded talk.
• Division by end-result allows us to see how public speaking can differ depending on the content format regardless of delivery. You can give a keynote address on stage or even have it pre-recorded. As long as you get the key point across, you’re doing your job.

Apple’s keynotes are consumed far more often online than they are in-person. So, being clear on the end result allows hybridization across different formats, especially with technology. Still, you should optimize the content and delivery of your talk for the medium you set as the primary one and let the others be optional.

In other words, if you’re conducting a seminar and interaction matters, do not sacrifice live interaction trying to force your seminar into a pre-recorded format.

However, once the seminar has been delivered digitally, or in person, the video can be uploaded as pre-recorded for those who want to follow along or are simply curious about your seminar’s content and might sign up for the next one.

To understand which format or type to set as your primary one, you must know the pros and cons of each kind of public speaking.

Digital public speaking emerged alongside the telethon selling format on cable TV. While the first telethons weren’t entirely digital, the format’s inception lies firmly in this period because TV’s shift to streaming brought about the first boom in digital public speaking.

In 2020, there was yet another shift as Corporate America got thoroughly familiarized with Zoom, a digital conferencing tool.

And once people knew how to use it to participate in meetings, listening to live talks was only a few clicks away. Zoom launched webinar mode, making it even more convenient to start giving talks to a large digital audience.

Still, there are multiple platforms through which you can engage in digital public speaking, including Facebook Live, Youtube Streaming, and even Twitch.

Pros of Digital Public Speaking

• Low overhead – You don’t need to book a conference center; people don’t have to pay to fly.  
• Easy for higher frequency – You can easily deliver more talks in a shorter period, thanks to the lack of traveling involved.

Cons of Digital Public Speaking

• Harder to hold the audience’s attention – Task-switching is the key obstacle in digital public speaking, making it harder to deliver keynotes. However, interactive digital workshops really thrive in this environment.

Pros of on-Stage Public Speaking

• Better translates to other arenas – If you learn to speak from the stage, you can speak to smaller groups, give talks digitally, and hold a confident conversation. This doesn’t always work the other way: Zoom maestros aren’t as equipped to give a talk from a stage.  
• Instant authority – The Lab Coat Effect is one where we automatically infer authority if someone resembles a figure of authority. That’s why stage presentations are important for big ideas. The audience is more receptive when they see you on a stage regardless of your credentials.

Cons of on-Stage Public Speaking

• Limits the ability to interact – Since the format allows monologuing, it can be easy to get carried away giving your talk without bringing the audience along. In some instances, it can be downright tough to engage more personally with people because the crowd is too big.  
• Hard to master – While it can ultimately be an advantage, you must recognize it for the drawback that is initially, as getting on stage is difficult for most people with no prior experience. Even seasoned public speakers admit to being nervous before each talk.

Pros of Pre-Recorded Talks

• Room for error – Since pre-recorded talks are not live, you can get away with making errors, especially if you’re adept at editing. You also don’t have to be in front of a crowd and can talk to the camera as if it were your friend. This allows even the uninitiated to get involved with public speaking without taking extensive training.  
• Simultaneous delivery for multiple talks – While it isn’t important for most people to give multiple tasks at once, it is possible to do so with a set of pre-recorded talks. If you’re a busy executive or a business owner, you can be more productive. If you’re trying to elevate your career as a professional speaker, a few pre-recorded webinars delivered to potential clients for free can help get your foot in the door without too much effort.

Cons of Pre-Recorded Talks

• Can become a crutch – The convenience of these talks is also their greatest drawback. You cannot give pre-recorded talks exclusively because that severely limits your public speaking muscles. Using them in conjunction with other forms of speaking is the ideal balance for skill maintenance and productivity boosting.  
• Lower engagement – Since you are not able to interact live, you’re limited to predetermined engagement tools like asking people to imagine a scenario or posing rhetorical questions. You can pop in live at the end of your talk to take live questions. This hybridization or pre-recorded public speaking with digital public speaking is best for consultants and thought leaders.

Examples of Public Speaking

To be a great public speaker, you must consume great relevant content. That’s why you need to know what type of audio content constitutes public speaking. The following section covers examples of public speaking:

Basic Elements of Public Speaking

Now that you know what kind of content you should consume as a budding public speaker let’s look at the key elements to watch out for. Most well-constructed speeches will include the following:

• Signposting – The beginning portion introduces not just the topic but sections of the talk, including what will be addressed later on. Look at the third paragraph of this post to get an idea of what signposting is.  
• Main argument – This rests in the body of the speech, where the speaker makes the main point. You should never make a point without supporting it with logic, fact, and even a compelling narrative.  
• Supporting the argument – As mentioned above, your argument needs support. Use analogies, metaphors, and of course, data to back up the point you’re making.  
• Recap – The conclusion is the final part where your talk’s recap sits. Here, you tell your audience briefly the main points you have made without taking them down the details lane.

Tips to Become a Better Public Speaker

To become a better public speaker, you must use the observe, internalize, and practice formula. Here’s how you should go about it:

• Observe – Look at the types and examples of public speaking listed in this article and consume different talks that fall into all sorts of categories. Don’t rely too much on one speaker, or you may inadvertently become a knock-off.  
• Internalize – By consuming content without judgment, you’ll start to internalize what you find compelling. You must let go of conscious deconstruction tendencies and simply consume content until it is second nature to you.  
• Practice – Finally, the toughest and the most critical part of becoming a public speaker is simply practicing more often. Find opportunities to give talks. If you don’t find on-stage openings, simply give recorded talks or even stream your keynote. With enough practice, you’ll find your talks rising to the level of great public speakers whose content you so thoroughly consumed.

Credit to cookie_studio (on Freepik) for the featured image of this article (further edited)

• - Google Chrome

Intended for healthcare professionals

• Access provided by Google Indexer
• My email alerts
• BMA member login
• Username * Password * Forgot your log in details? Need to activate BMA Member Log In Log in via OpenAthens Log in via your institution

Search form

• Advanced search
• Search responses
• Search blogs
• How to prepare and...

How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

• Related content
• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

Partner Center

Home Blog Presentation Ideas How to Become Great in Public Speaking: Presenting Best Practices

How to Become Great in Public Speaking: Presenting Best Practices

As the popular lore tells: you can talk your way into success. Indeed, great public speakers often hold top corporate positions, lead the nations, and rally others to take joint action. But what if talking isn’t your forte, especially when it comes to doing so in front of large audiences? In that case, you’ll benefit a lot from the public speaking tips and tricks we showcase in this post! 

What is Public Speaking? 

In the simplest terms, public speaking is the art of effective oral communication with one person or many. We talk to the public anytime we engage in a discussion with someone else.  

Everyone knows how to communicate with others and do so in front of bigger groups e.g. at work. Far fewer, feel confident with delivering persuasive speeches or doing public presentations at conferences, virtual events, or even in the boardroom full of important stakeholders. 

But we also know how great public speakers look and act. They are confident and inspiring, can “plant” ideas into other’s heads, and inspire action. 

The Benefits of Public Speaking 

Being a great public speaker gives you several major advantages in personal and professional areas: 

• Higher level of verbal and nonverbal communication skills
• Better critical thinking and analysis abilities
• Leeway into leadership positions 
• Personal brand development
• More productive networking 

Ultimately, being good at public speaking helps you get more comfortable in group settings and draw the spotlight towards yourself. Talented public speakers can connect better with new people through charismatic presentations and persuasive talks. This, in turn, opens up an array of new opportunities — be it making more friends or raising funds for your project.

Different Types of Public Speaking 

As mentioned already, public speaking refers both to our day-day two-way exchanges with others and public presentations to an audience. 

In the case of the latter, public speeches can be classified as: 

Extemporaneous speeches

Pre-written speeches and practiced ahead of time. Usually, a speaker will rely on aids such as notes, presentation slides, or an outline when delivering the speech. Example : Conference talks. 

Impromptu speeches

Spur of the moment speeches, delivered without any preparation, agenda, or notes. Since you are caught off guard, delivering such a speech can be pretty challenging unless you are already good at speaking in public. Example : being asked to speak up during a customer meeting.

Manuscript speeches

Word-by-word delivery of a pre-written script, usually displayed on a screen/teleprompter. In essence, you are reading your speech rather than presenting it. Example : Officials addressing the nation. 

Memorized speeches

You deliver a prepared speech from memory without any aids. Such speaking can feel gut-wrenching if you are afraid to forget your lines and don’t feel confident improvising. Careful preparation is needed. Example : Ted talks or live product presentations. 

The Fear of Public Speaking 

Despite the fact that most of us love chatting, far fewer feel comfortable talking in front of larger audiences. In fact, 75% of Americans have some level of public speaking anxiety. Many also feel frantic about going on the stage. 

The fear of public speaking is called glossophobia. It’s a recognized psychological condition with symptoms such as: 

• Accelerated heart rate
• Dizziness and lightheadedness 

So what makes us terrified of public speaking? 

Physiologists say that the above reactions are our body’s natural response to threatening situations. Our nervous system enters a hyperarousal state, activating the sense of fear. This sabotages our performance on stage. 

But what prompts us to treat public speaking as a threatening situation? Researchers found that humans perceive prolonged eye watching as an existential threat. Back in the old days, observations from a hostile tribe were a strong sign of upcoming trouble. So did a watchful eye of a predatory animal. 

This “memory” still remains imprinted subconsciously in our brain today. Thus, when we go on stage to deliver a public speech, our brain first registers the gazing audience as a threat. The brain goes into the “fight or flee” mode, prompting a reaction similar to the one we experience when facing actual danger. Most public speaking tips are aimed at helping us cope with this reaction and develop a more relaxed response to being observed. 

Also, some of us tend to get extra jittery before public speaking due to anxiety sensitivity — the fear of fear. Apart from being scared of public speaking as an act, some of us also feel stressed about how their anxiety will interfere with performing well. This leads to a cascading effect of paralysis. 

But as Dalel Carnegie wrote in the “ Art of Public Speaking, 13th Edition ” : “ If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.”

A strong mindset is the key to taming your fear of public speaking. If regular calming exercises don’t help, try attending public speaking classes or taking individual coaching sessions. An experienced mentor can help you learn to cope with anxiety, hone your public speaking skills, and develop better confidence in front of groups. 

How to Be a Better Public Speaker: 6 Tips 

Confidence is also crucial. Whenever we are uncertain of our abilities to do good, we feel uncomfortable. So practice public talks, and practice a lot. In the words of Dale Carnegie, 

“Practice in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practice in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.”

So, how to be a great presenter and improve your public speaking skills? Below are six research-backed public speaking techniques you should employ the next time you are preparing to deliver a speech! 

1. Nail Your Opening

The presenter’s anxiety is at highest during the first 30-60 seconds of the speaking. Once you get past that, you’ll hail more confidently through the rest of your speech. 

Hence, make sure to get a positive response from your audience from the get-go. Here are some ideas for starting a public speech: 

• Begin with the ending: use BLUF technique — bottom line upfront 
• Share a personal story to build empathy 
• Ask a rhetorical question to make the audience think 
• Provide a quote that sets the tone for your narrative 
• Project into the future to get the audience focused on outcomes 
• Use some humor to squeeze out some laughs and relax yourself 

Read more about how to start a presentation and which slides to use. 

2. Maintain Eye Contact with the Audience 

Simon Sinek, the most-viewed presenter on TED, offers this piece of advice : 

“Look at specific audience members throughout your speech. If you can, give each person that you intently look at an entire sentence or thought, without breaking your gaze. When you finish a sentence, move on to another person and keep connecting with individual people until you’re done speaking.”

By maintaining such gradual eye contact, you can build a better rapport with all audience members. Then again, it prevents your thoughts from getting scattered if you leave your gaze scanning over everyone. Also, by focusing on one person at a time, you deliberately ignore the stares from others. This helps minimize the anxiety-inducing “fight or flee” reflex. 

3. Try the “Inward, Outward, Forward” Formula For Your Speech 

The Inward, Outward, Forward format of structuring your speech is a good way to make a strong point within a short time span. It helps the listeners retain your core message and align with your way of thinking. Here’s how it works:

• Explain why you are bringing up the topic. 
• Provide evidence on what others think about it. 
• End with a solution to the stated problem.

For example, if you are doing an after-action review meeting with your team, you can first summarize the main challenge you’ve faced. Then present examples of how individuals or other teams are handling similar issues. Lastly, sum up your proposal on the follow-up steps and solutions you’d recommend trying. 

4. Use the “Commander’s Intent” Technique to Make Your Ideas Stick 

Commander’s Intent (CI) is a technique the military personnel uses to communicate the main directive. 

A CI is a brief statement, placed on top of every order, summarizing the plan’s goal and desired end results. You can apply the same tactic to highlight the main points from each section of your speech. Or to prepare accompanying slides for the presentation.

Add a CI statement to the most important slides. Then expand on the idea within your speech. Doing so will help the audience focus on the key discussion point and retain the information better. 

5. Choose the Right Pitch and Tone of Voice 

Researchers from Yale University found that a speaker’s tone of voice and pitch influences the listeners’ perception of the speaker in terms of trust and likability. Why so?

Because voice is the most effective means for conveying emotions. It’s more channeling to disguise your attitude when you talk. So if you sound unconfident, anxious, doubting, or bored, the audience will likely sense that and act accordingly. 

For that reason, many amazing public speakers undergo voice coaching. They train to project the right emotions via their voice and naturally adjust pitch and vocal tone to convey different ideas. Most strive to achieve the maximum resonance point — a resonance that infers power to your voice.

For example, if your range is 2 octaves and 4 notes respectively, this is your max resonance point. Talking at this level most of the time is optimal. 

When you need to show passion, go a note higher. Go a note or two lower if you want to project certainty or authority. 

Final Tip: Work on Your Body Language

When presenting in person, your body language will also be telling of your confidence and authority. Plus, it will shape the audience’s perception of you, just like your voice.  Hence, be sure to practice your posture and gestures too! In particular:

Don’t self-block (aka trying to shrink your body).

This means crossing arms, slouching, keeping hands in the pocket, etc. Such movements act as a barricade between you and the audience. They make you appear less trustworthy. To avoid them, hold on to the microphone or a presentation clicker. 

Practice breathing and hand gestures.

Uneven, raspy breathing will affect your pitch and tone of voice. So practice taking slow, measured breaths to pace your speech better. Take longer pauses when you want to emphasize a point.  Also, use mild hand gestures, head nods, and arm movements to engage with the audience. But don’t gesticulate too much as this will appear distractive. 

Ultimately, there are no shortcuts. Practice, practice, and then practice some more! Great public speakers aren’t born — they are self-made! 

1. Presentation Content Slides Infographic for PowerPoint

The Presentation Content Slides Infographic, is a template that provides very useful tools to create any sort of professional presentation. Customize this PowerPoint Template according to your needs.

Use This Template

Like this article? Please share

Convincing Speech, Persuasive Speech, Presentation Tips, Public Speaking, Speech Filed under Presentation Ideas

Related Articles

Filed under Design • April 23rd, 2024

How to Create the Perfect Handouts for a Presentation

Learn how to create effective handouts for presentations and the recommended structure for handouts with this guide.

Filed under Google Slides Tutorials • April 19th, 2024

How to Find Trash on Google Slides

Don’t worry if you accidently delete a presentation file. Learn how to find trash on Google Slides with this guide.

Filed under Business • April 10th, 2024

Discovering Coaching Presentation Tools

Discover the best PPT templates to use as coaching presentation tools with this article. Tools explained + examples.

Leave a Reply

• The Art of Public Speaking

Blend Images - Hill Street Studios / Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Public speaking is an oral presentation in which a speaker addresses an audience , and until the 20th century, public speakers were usually referred to as orators and their discourses as orations. 

A century ago, in his "Handbook of Public Speaking," John Dolman observed that public speaking is significantly different from a theatrical performance in that it is   "not a conventionalized imitation of life, but life itself, a natural function of life, a real human being in real communication with his fellows; and it is best when it is most real."

Unlike its predecessor oration, public speaking involves an interplay of not only body language and recitation, but on conversation , delivery , and feedback . Public speaking today is more about the audience's reaction and participation than an orations' technical correctness.

Six Steps to Successful Public Speaking 

According to John. N Gardner and A. Jerome Jewler's "Your College Experience," there a six steps to creating a successful public speech:

• Clarify your objective.
• Analyze your audience.
• Collect and organize your information.
• Choose your visual aids.
• Prepare your notes.
• Practice your delivery.

As language has evolved over time, these principals have become even more apparent and essential in speaking well in a public capacity. Stephen Lucas says in "Public Speaking" that languages have become "more colloquial" and speech delivery "more conversational" as "more and more citizens of ordinary means took to the rostrum, audiences no longer regarded the orator as a larger-than-life figure to be regarded with awe and deference.

As a result, most modern audiences favor straightforwardness and honesty, authenticity to the oratory tricks of old. Public speakers, then, must strive to convey their objective directly to the audience they will be speaking in front of, collecting information, visual aids, and notes that will best serve the speakers' honesty and integrity of delivery.

Public Speaking in the Modern Context

From business leaders to politicians, many professionals in modern times use public speaking to inform, motivate, or persuade audiences near and far, though in the last few centuries the art of public speaking has moved beyond the stiff orations of old to a more casual conversation that contemporary audiences prefer.

Courtland L. Bovée notes in "Contemporary Public Speaking" that while basic speaking skills have changed little, "styles in public speaking have." Whereas the early 19th century carried with it the popularity of the recitation of classic speeches, the 20th century brought a change in focus to elocution. Today, Bovée notes, "the emphasis is on extemporaneous speaking, giving a speech that has been planned in advance but is delivered spontaneously."

The internet, too, has helped change the face of modern public speaking with advents of "going live" on Facebook and Twitter and recording speeches for later broadcast to a global audience on Youtube. However, as Peggy Noonan puts it in "What I Saw at the Revolution":

"Speeches are important because they are one of the great constants of our political history; for two hundred years they have been changing — making, forcing — history."

• The Parts of a Speech in Classical Rhetoric
• The Best Quotes From 19th Century Feminist Lucy Stone
• The Rhetorical Canons
• What Does Delivery Mean in Speech and Rhetoric?
• What Is Rhetoric?
• Definition and Examples of Hypocrisis in Rhetoric
• Can You Identify the 3 Branches of Rhetoric?
• An Overview of Classical Rhetoric
• Oration (Classical Rhetoric)
• The 5 Canons of Classical Rhetoric
• Pause (Speech and Writing)
• classical rhetoric
• Phonetic Prosody
• Definition and Examples of Ethos in Classical Rhetoric

Ace the Presentation

The Ultimate Guide to Public Speaking

Knowing how to communicate effectively is fundamental for both our personal and professional lives.

Speaking in Public is challenging for many people, as some are timid and insecure, or simply require more experience in speaking in front of others .

In this article, you will learn about the basics of public speaking , common speaking challenges that people have, how to address those challenges, and key tips on how to structure your delivery to make your speeches more successful.

Let us start our Guide to Public Speaking with a bit of history. Further along, we will address the importance of communication elements, and we will also bring relevant information on how to use language and structure a public presentation.

The Art of Public Speaking – Origin and Meaning

Oratory or public speaking originated with the need people had to defend themselves from the attacks of the tyrants of Syracuse, thereby meaning a way of setting social justice and a ticket to freedom of speech.

According to Lopes (2000), the art of public speaking comes from Greek origins; the city of Athens was the most crucial center of oratory studies both in rhetoric and eloquence.

In the 5th century BC, with concern for the mastery of the verbal expression arose the oratory in Greece. At that time, ordinary citizens would be usurped of their property and other rights. Only the clergy and high society people would be allowed to reverse social and political situations.

However, with Aristotle, public speaking found fertile ground for its development in his most ancient work on oratory entitled “The Art of Rhetoric .”

Aristotle book refers, respectively: 

• The line of argument to be followed by the speaker;
• To teach how the listener learns the ideas;
• The exposition of the structure of the discourse and its parts.

What is Public Speaking?

Public Speaking is an exposition of ideas prepared in an organized way, and that should always be composed of some essential characteristics concerning the organization of thought and reasoning.

Bloch et al. (2002) point out that public speaking expresses what we feel, communicates what we think, and exposes the facts as effectively as possible.

 Your audience can be from the child to the most evolved scientist who can absorb what you say.

7 Elements of Speech Communication

1. emitter/ speaker.

The emitter is the person who wants to deliver a message to a particular group of people or individuals; in public speaking, the issuer is known as the speaker.

Factors to be considered:

• Motivation – The presentation can be made to provide/obtain information, to convince the group about a new idea, to “sell” a service, to present results, or to persuade about an argument;
• Credibility – The degree of acceptance of the message shall be directly proportional to the knowledge of the speaker on the subject;
• Performance – Correct use of verbal expression and non-verbal communication with others.

2. Receiver/ Audience

The person or group of persons situated at the other end of the communication chain receives the message and interprets it internally, manifesting this interpretation externally.

The receiver goes the other way, that is, part of the signifiers until reaching the intention of signification.

Therefore, the mapping of characteristics of the target public shall include all attempts to obtain as much information as possible about it: number of persons present, sex, age, race, profession or function in the undertaking, training, level of education, knowledge of the subject to be dealt with, relevant background and expectations or needs.

3. Target/ Content

The content or target is the link between speaker and audience; the object of communication; translation of ideas, objectives, and intentions; the message shall be organized in terms of:

• Content – refers to what will be said regarding a specific subject, and the first step is to define the purpose of the presentation; 
• After that, having in mind the main characteristics of the audience and the time available , one should select the most important ideas that will be presented, that is, prioritize the relevant arguments.

4. Structure

The structure concerns the organization of the message. A well-organized message presents everyone its elements connected logically with each other;

When organizing the content, it is essential to divide the presentation into three parts: i) introduction (attractive and inviting), ii)  a body (concise, clear and coherent), and a conclusion (emphatic and brief);

The codes are a set of rules combined to generate understanding; the audience will identify this sign system, performing the decoding operation, only if its repertoire is typical of the issuer.

Language is the code most used to establish communication since it is the social agreement of language made by a particular society.

The code is also a set of signs and signals used to transmit the message: verbal language, non-verbal language, sign language, colors.

 If the speaker fails one of these elements, the message may not be delivered properly, and there is no communication.

Therefore, it is vital that you thoroughly analyze your target audience to make sure that they understand the set of codes you choose.

6. Channel 

The channel functions as a “vein of circulation” of the message, which means the pathway chosen by the sender/speaker to which the message is handed.

When making a presentation, the message can be transmitted in different ways: visual gestures, body movements, facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, variation of height and vocal intensity, and manipulation of objects.

Whenever possible, it is crucial to know the location of the presentation in advance; in this way, some amendments it deems necessary can be removed.

By getting to know the environment you will be delivering your speech, you can plan each movement in the room, reduce the anxiety, the correct position of the equipment, the use of the microphone, etc.

“When troops move, it is essential to know the conditions of the land first; when you know distances, you can draw up direct or indirect attack plans. The understanding of where the battle will be braked shall indicate where they should concentrate or subdivide the forces. ” Sun Tau

The 7 Basic Elements of Public Speaking

An Easy Guide to All 15 Types of Speech

10 Public Speaking Tips for First-Timers

5 Things to Consider when Structuring and Delivering a Public Speaking

1. who is the speaker.

The speaker must know his natural communication behavior, if he speaks little, likes to communicate, has the habit of reading, is reserved or outgoing, so the speaker will know when his linguist skills are or will need to be further explored.

For speech skills to be improved, it is necessary to stimulate the habit of reading, producing texts and performing interpretations of written materials.

Reading aloud and recording the production of speech may also help to know about one’s evolution, deficiencies, and potentialities.

2. Who is the audience?

The speaker refers to the listeners/audience of the message, so the success of the speech is determined by the listener’s understanding or by the action that the experience will generate.

To guarantee that the message is accurately delivered to the audience, it is necessary to adjust the speech to the level of instruction and the current situation of the listener.

And that is determined by how you present the content starting from the structure to the tools you use to deliver it; also, the audience can become more attentive to receive the message have some prior knowledge of the subject.

3. What is the message being delivered?

Refers to the content and type of speech; however, the content is always involved in the service of a determined intention. For a purpose, the communication becomes meaningless if it fails to convey the subject.

4. Why is this message important?

What drives you and makes this message crucial to this crowd you wish to face and deliver it?

The Cruciality of a message has to do with the impression made to the listener after the message is transmitted. This effect to be produced when a speech is concluded must directly connect with the action intended to generate as a response.

Refers to the channel through which the message will be transmitted, being auditory, visual, or both, if it will be necessary to use more audiovisual resources, including microphone, multimedia, and others.

To know which resources will be most effective in the relevance of the message transmission takes into account, among other things, the distance between speaker and listener.

Inappropriate channel selection can lead to ineffective communication. The speaker should ask himself if the message he wishes to spread would be better understood if it was written or spoken, don’t forget about visual impacts.

Did you know that pauses during a speech create a feeling of suspense? A more attentive environment is built from a short crease, and the audience gets ready to receive what you will be saying, so using it share a key message from the content you have prepared.

• Being able to emphasize what one wants to say, providing explanative intonation can also manifest surprise, admiration, or irony; 
• The fluency and speed of speech present logical thinking and chained ideas, the use of more than one question mark in an interrogative phrase characterizes a question difficult to answer.

Thus, the use of these resources with balance and variety can confer the speaker’s naturalness, expressiveness, and attitude with the text emitted of greater understanding of the subject by the listener.

Imagine a doctor (speaker) who uses technical language to explain how a symptom a patient (listener)  has may turn into a dangerous disease if not taken care of and because he doesn’t master the language (content), he leaves there confused and not understanding how important it is that action is taken.

In such a case, the speaker:

1) Did not assess who the receiver of the message was;

2) Did not adapt the content to its listener;

3) Did not evaluate the intention of the message.

• Its essential point is to assess whether the receiver understands the message;
•  Check, whenever possible, by asking questions about what you exposed until that moment or asking him to recall the point’s central issue.

Public Speaking – Fears, blockages, and barriers

Blockages, barriers, tension, and nervousness will always exist, either for beginners or those who already have experience in public speaking.

There’s no getting better if we are not aware of these public speaking barriers .

5 Reasons why you Fear Public Speaking 

Unsuccessful experiences .

You may have an experience of public speaking and for some reason didn’t go as expected, which creates in you the false idea that will always give wrong.

The past is the past and does it right; you have to know the wrong steps; remember that people you may know as great speakers did poorly before that would be the example of Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1889, while working as a young lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi froze before a judge and ran out of court, feeling humiliated . “My head was spinning, and it felt like the whole court was doing the same,” Gandhi wrote in a letter.

He called this feeling “the terrible strain of public speaking .” And that’s kept him from even talking at dinners between friends. 

When Gandhi decided to dedicate himself to a cause and wanted to convey a message he considered essential profoundly, Gandhi found the motivation he needed to overcome fear. 

Lack of Experience

When you do not practice something or do it a few times, you don’t create space for your brain to build learnings, preventing the development of skill, in this case, public speaking.

Cognitive psychologists say that the learning process is a systematic and active process that associates new information to the knowledge we already have on a subject, exploratory and creative.

The billionaire Warren Buffett was terrified of speaking in public early in his career. He attempted to take an oratory course, but he gave up out of fear; however, he was very aware that it would be essential to succeed.

Then, in his second trial, Buffett won a diploma that he boasts with great pride; in his documentary “Becoming Warren Buffet,” Buffet stated:

“In my office, you will not see the degree I got at the University of Nebraska, and you will not see the master’s degree I took at Columbia University. But you’ll see the certificate I received from the Dale Carnegie Course.”   Warren Buffett

Perfectionism 

Many psychologists describe perfectionism as the need to set high and rigid standards for oneself; a perfectionist follows a series of conduct requirements, created especially for himself, and makes constant self-evaluations.

Excess self-criticism when delivering public speaking may prevent you from seeing any action you do with empathy and can also degrade your self-esteem, which is crucial to standing in front of a podium.

Social anxiety corresponds to the difficulty the person presents in interacting socially, for example, speaking in public. It comes from the fear of being judged, feeling humiliated, or that other person may notice their weaknesses.

Symptoms of anxiety and nervousness are typical when they arise before or during a job interview or in a presentation. 

However, when symptoms arise in various situations, especially when you are around other people, it can be a sign of social anxiety disorder, and the person should seek psychological treatment.

Negative self-image

Your self-image is basically how you see yourself, and it’s your internal photography that shows itself to others. And how do you measure the impact of your image on those who hear you?

If you see yourself as someone who can’t do an outstanding performance in public, you probably can’t do it.

If perhaps you said something wrong at the time of school and your classmates laughed at you, you may today be afraid that others will laugh again at what you have to say.

Note that these problems directly influence your ability to speak in public. And that if you change the way you look at yourself, you will significantly improve your potential to express yourself in large groups.

3 Key benefits of Assertive Communication: Easy Tips to Develop it!

11 Best Body Language Tips For Engaging Presentations (#11 is Underrated)

Growing up, we were always taught how we should have manners while talking to others and that there were some things we could not do in front of people like sprawling or even putting our elbows on the table while eating because it was rude. In the examples above, the rudeness comes from gestures, not…

How to Become a Confident Public Speaker – 6 Tips

Ever wondered what it feels like to command a room filled with people just with the way you speak? How to Become a Confident Public Speaker ? No, it’s not a gift (in case you are wondering); rather, it takes practice and time for you to master the art of public speaking. This simply means…

3 Strategies to reduce fear before and during a Speech

Focus on breathing.

A simple exercise to improve breathing is standing with your legs ajar in a posture that bodyweight is proportionally distributed in your two legs.

Place your hands on the waist and fill the lungs with air slowly, then release the air slowly with your mouth half-open.

 Repeat the exercise several times until you feel relaxed; this is a good exercise before starting a presentation.

Practice in a safe place (home or with friends)

One of the most effective ways to deal with the fear of public speaking is to practice a presentation in advance. Set the central points of your speech and set up a schematic to remember them all. After that, practice your exposure alone as often as necessary.

Prefer low lights

To reduce anxiety or any fear during public speaking, you can choose to dark the place a little bit to mitigate your excitement and keep your mind clear, and the audience focused and comfortable.

There is one more benefit to having dim lighting; the public laughs more.

  Comedians prefer a “poorly lit space,” Peter Mcgraw and Joel Warner described in their book The Humor Code, which seems to “help people feel more protected and thus less inhibited in laughing.”

5 Tips to Win a Crowd Over when Speaking in Public

One of the concerns of a speaker must be to please the audience. If you’ve done a previous study of the type of audience you’ll talk to, and you’ll undoubtedly know how to behave. Meet some challenges to get the viewer’s attention:

1. Be Truthful and Care about the Audience Experience

Do everything so that your professional qualifications and experiences do not demonstrate exhibitionism. Greet everyone with courtesy and issue honesty and professionalism. 

Another way of putting this would be – try your best to be charismatic.

2. Use a simple language

Your first strategy is to employ simple language so that your text becomes clear. The choice of words can create intimacy with the receiver and make your speech more pleasurable.

Beforehand knowing the audience to whom you will perform, it will be possible to plan how you will speak and what words to use.

It is essential to mark the vocabulary to be used considering the minor present education level.

3. Instill curiosity in the audience

Cite a fact or ask a question that makes them curious; when it’s time to deliver a speech, always give them new data to support the fresh perspective you want them to get to know.

4. Turn your text into a story

Generally, we will deal with matters related to reality, to a fact-specific, experienced, or relevant to society. In such a case, turn your theme into a story of your or other people and structure it with the same narrative techniques.

See the problem in the subject, what will give life, and arguments to your text. Count as the facts occur, its most critical points, and then conclude. 

People usually enjoy storytelling, especially if they are personal experiences related to a subject that is concerning to them it turns the presentation more engaging to them. 

5. Know when to change strategies

Notice the extent to which you are pleasing or not if you observe any tiredness movement (people getting up, yawning, talking).

Change your strategy, be more succinct, and instill the participation of all.

Changes in intonation in the course of speech and the use of audiovisual or dynamic resources, too, are usually good strategies to maintain the audience attentive to your presentation.

Public speaking can be difficult if you get familiarized with pitching ideas and sharing your notes and research with unknown people.

However, once you get in it and allow yourself to fail, keep learning and be open to practice and share the knowledge, you learn it quickly.

References and Further Reading

10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills.

AcethePresentation. 13 ways to overcome public speaking anxiety.

AcethePresentation. AmadeBai, Emidio. What Makes A Bad Public Speaker? Top 10 Worst Traits To Avoid

High Spark. The Ultimate Public Speaking Guide To Impress Any Audience.

Similar Posts

A 9-Step Practical Guide On How To Analyze A Speech – Speech Analysis of I have A Dream Speech as an Example

A speech, as we all know, is a vocal opinion of a speaker’s stand. Speeches are usually used as an effective tool for rallying support, conveying opinion, as well as influencing the thoughts of others (usually the audience) to accept or agree with the thoughts of the Speaker. For a speech to achieve its goal,…

The 4 Methods or Types of Speech Delivery

On a daily basis, people use several types of speech delivery to connect with others, influence decisions, and motivate change without realizing which occasions a specific method of speech delivery should be used. Today we will talk about 4 types of speech delivery that are commonly used and sometimes happen almost unnoticed. Manuscript Speech Memorized…

Top 41 Famous Speeches IN HISTORY

Speeches have been empowering people for a very long time. They have uplifted the spirits of people and educated them on various topics. There are some famous speeches in history that are considered as one of the best.  Why speeches have such a profound effect on people and become timeless? There are many speeches that do…

How to Write a Memorable Speech – 8 Tips

Do you want to learn how to write a memorable speech which will stay in the heart of your audience for quite a long time? Do you intend to address a large number of people, and leave a lasting and memorable impression? Not sure if the words will capture the undivided attention of your audience?…

19+ Public Speaking Techniques and Skills (#18 is Gold)

The art of public speaking has become one of the most sought-after skills in the 21st century. There was indeed a time when oratory skills were exclusive only to political pundits and social critics, but for the better 21st century, this skill will be a requisite tool for the big business. What are public speaking…

15 Ideas To Make A Speech Unique, Memorable & Inspiring

Are you often called to speak in front of others? If yes, then the art of making your speech unique, memorable, and inspiring is something you should be able to do with little or no effort. This is important because listening to a yawn-inducing and lifeless speech is one of the worst things your audience…

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 3: Oral Presentations

Patricia Williamson

Many academic courses require students to present information to their peers and teachers in a classroom setting. Such presentations are usually in the form of a short talk, often, but not always, accompanied by visual aids such as a PowerPoint. Yet, students often become nervous at the idea of speaking in front of a group. This chapter aims to help calms those nerves.

This chapter is divided under five headings to establish a quick reference guide for oral presentations.

• A beginner, who may have little or no experience, should read each section in full.
• For the intermediate learner, who has some experience with oral presentations, review the sections you feel you need work on.
• If you are an experienced presenter then you may wish to jog your memory about the basics or gain some fresh insights about technique.

The Purpose of an Oral Presentation

Generally, oral presentation is public speaking, either individually or as a group, the aim of which is to provide information, to entertain, to persuade the audience, or to educate. In an academic setting, oral presentations are often assessable tasks with a marking criteria. Therefore, students are being evaluated on two separate-but-related competencies within a set timeframe: the ability to speak and the quality of the spoken content. An oral presentation differs from a speech in that it usually has visual aids and may involve audience interaction; ideas are both shown and explained . A speech, on the other hand, is a formal verbal discourse addressing an audience, without visual aids and audience participation.

Tips for Types of Oral Presentations

Individual presentation.

• Know your content. The number one way to have a smooth presentation is to know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Write it down and rehearse it until you feel relaxed and confident and do not have to rely heavily on notes while speaking.
• Eliminate ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ from your oral presentation vocabulary. Speak slowly and clearly and pause when you need to. It is not a contest to see who can race through their presentation the fastest or fit the most content within the time limit. The average person speaks at a rate of 125 words per minute. Therefore, if you are required to speak for 10 minutes, you will need to write and practice 1250 words for speaking. Ensure you time yourself and get it right.
• Ensure you meet the requirements of the marking criteria, including non-verbal communication skills. Make good eye contact with the audience; watch your posture; don’t fidget.
• Know the language requirements. Check if you are permitted to use a more casual, conversational tone and first-person pronouns, or do you need to keep a more formal, academic tone?
• Breathe. You are in control. You’ve got this!

Group Presentation

• All of the above applies; however, you are working as part of a group. So how should you approach group work?
• Firstly, if you are not assigned to a group by your lecturer/tutor, choose people based on their availability and accessibility. If you cannot meet face-to-face you may schedule online meetings.
• Get to know each other. It’s easier to work with friends than strangers.
• Consider everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. Determining strengths and weaknesses will involve a discussion that will often lead to task or role allocations within the group; however, everyone should be carrying an equal level of the workload.
• Some group members may be more focused on getting the script written, with a different section for each team member to say. Others may be more experienced with the presentation software and skilled in editing and refining PowerPoint slides so they are appropriate for the presentation. Use one visual aid (one set of PowerPoint slides) for the whole group; you may consider using a shared cloud drive so that there is no need to integrate slides later on.
• Be patient and tolerant with each other’s learning style and personality. Do not judge people in your group based on their personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender, age, or cultural background.
• Rehearse as a group–more than once. Keep rehearsing until you have seamless transitions between speakers. Ensure you thank the previous speaker and introduce the one following you. If you are rehearsing online, but have to present in-person, try to schedule some face-to-face time that will allow you to physically practice using the technology and classroom space of the campus.

Writing Your Presentation

Approach the oral presentation task just as you would any other assignment. Review the available topics and then do some background reading and research to ensure you can talk about the topic for the appropriate length of time and in an informed manner. Break the question down into manageable parts .

Creating a presentation differs from writing an essay in that the information in the speech must align with the visual aid. Therefore, with each idea, concept, or new information that you write, you need to think about how this might be visually displayed through minimal text and the occasional use of images. Proceed to write your ideas in full, but consider that not all information will end up on a PowerPoint slide. Many guides, such as Marsen (2020), will suggest no more than five points per slide, with each bullet point have no more than six words (for a maximum of 30 words per slide). After all, it is you who are doing the presenting , not the PowerPoint. Your presentation skills are being evaluated, but this evaluation may include only a small percentage for the actual visual aid: check your assessment guidelines.

Using Visual Aids

To keep your audience engaged and help them to remember what you have to say, you may want to use visual aids, such as slides.

When designing slides for your presentation, make sure:

• any text is brief, grammatically correct and easy to read. Use dot points and space between lines, plus large font size (18-20 point)
• Resist the temptation to use dark slides with a light-coloured font; it is hard on the eyes
• if images and graphs are used to support your main points, they should be non-intrusive on the written work

Images and Graphs

• Your audience will respond better to slides that deliver information quickly – images and graphs are a good way to do this. However, they are not always appropriate or necessary.

When choosing images, it’s important to find images that:

• support your presentation and aren’t just decorative
• are high quality, however, using large HD picture files can make the PowerPoint file too large overall for submission via Turnitin
• you have permission to use (Creative Commons license, royalty-free, own images, or purchased)
• suggested sites for free-to-use images: Openclipart – Clipping Culture ; Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash ; Pxfuel – Royalty free stock photos free download ; When we share, everyone wins – Creative Commons

The specific requirements for your papers may differ. Again, ensure that you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you’re unsure how to meet them.

Using Visual Aids Effectively

Too often, students make an impressive PowerPoint though do not understand how to use it effectively to enhance their presentation.

• Rehearse with the PowerPoint.
• Keep the slides synchronized with your presentation; change them at the appropriate time.
• Refer to the information on the slides. Point out details; comment on images; note facts such as data.
• Don’t let the PowerPoint just be something happening in the background while you speak.
• Write notes in your script to indicate when to change slides or which slide number the information applies to.
• Pace yourself so you are not spending a disproportionate amount of time on slides at the beginning of the presentation and racing through them at the end.
• Practice, practice, practice.

Nonverbal Communication

It is clear by the name that nonverbal communication includes the ways that we communicate without speaking. You use nonverbal communication everyday–often without thinking about it. Consider meeting a friend on the street: you may say “hello”, but you may also smile, wave, offer your hand to shake, and the like. Here are a few tips that relate specifically to oral presentations.

Being confident and looking confident are two different things. Even if you may be nervous (which is natural), the following will help you look confident and professional:

• Avoid slouching or leaning – standing up straight instantly gives you an air of confidence, but more importantly it allows you to breathe freely. Remember that breathing well allows you to project your voice, but it also prevents your body from experiencing extra stress.
• If you have the space, move when appropriate. You can, for example, move to gesture to a more distant visual aid or to get closer to different part of the audience who might be answering a question.
• If you’re someone who “speaks with their hands”, resist the urge to gesticulate constantly. Use gestures purposefully to highlight, illustrate, motion, or the like.
• Be animated, but don’t fidget. Ask someone to watch you rehearse and identify if you have any nervous, repetitive habits you may be unaware of, such as ‘finger-combing’ your hair or touching your face.
• Avoid ‘verbal fidgets’ such as “umm” or “ahh”; silence is ok. If you needs to cough or clear your throat, do so once then take a drink of water.
• Avoid distractions that you can control. Put your phone on “do not disturb” or turn it off completely.
• Keep your distance. Don’t hover over front-row audience members.
• Have a cheerful demeaner. Remember that your audience will mirror your demeanor.
• Maintain an engaging tone in your voice, by varying tone, pace, and emphasis. Match emotion to concept; slow when concepts might be difficult; stress important words.
• Don’t read your presentation–present it! Internalize your script so you can speak with confidence and only occasionally refer to your notes if needed.
• Make eye contact with your audience members so they know you are talking with them, not at them. You’re having a conversation. Watch the link below for some great speaking tips, including eye contact.

Below is a video of some great tips about public speaking from Amy Wolff at TEDx Portland [1]

• Wolff. A. [The Oregonion]. (2016, April 9). 5 public speaking tips from TEDxPortland speaker coach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNOXZumCXNM&ab_channel=TheOregonian ↵

Two or more people tied by marriage, blood, adoption, or choice; living together or apart by choice or circumstance; having interaction within family roles; creating and maintaining a common culture; being characterized by economic cooperation; deciding to have or not to have children, either own or adopted; having boundaries; and claiming mutual affection.

Chapter 3: Oral Presentations Copyright © 2023 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

24 Oral Presentations

Many academic courses require students to present information to their peers and teachers in a classroom setting. This is usually in the form of a short talk, often, but not always, accompanied by visual aids such as a power point. Students often become nervous at the idea of speaking in front of a group.

This chapter is divided under five headings to establish a quick reference guide for oral presentations.

A beginner, who may have little or no experience, should read each section in full.

For the intermediate learner, who has some experience with oral presentations, review the sections you feel you need work on.

The Purpose of an Oral Presentation

Generally, oral presentation is public speaking, either individually or as a group, the aim of which is to provide information, entertain, persuade the audience, or educate. In an academic setting, oral presentations are often assessable tasks with a marking criteria. Therefore, students are being evaluated on their capacity to speak and deliver relevant information within a set timeframe. An oral presentation differs from a speech in that it usually has visual aids and may involve audience interaction; ideas are both shown and explained . A speech, on the other hand, is a formal verbal discourse addressing an audience, without visual aids and audience participation.

Types of Oral Presentations

Individual presentation.

• Breathe and remember that everyone gets nervous when speaking in public. You are in control. You’ve got this!
• Know your content. The number one way to have a smooth presentation is to know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Write it down and rehearse it until you feel relaxed and confident and do not have to rely heavily on notes while speaking.
• Eliminate ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ from your oral presentation vocabulary. Speak slowly and clearly and pause when you need to. It is not a contest to see who can race through their presentation the fastest or fit the most content within the time limit. The average person speaks at a rate of 125 words per minute. Therefore, if you are required to speak for 10 minutes, you will need to write and practice 1250 words for speaking. Ensure you time yourself and get it right.
• Ensure you meet the requirements of the marking criteria, including non-verbal communication skills. Make good eye contact with the audience; watch your posture; don’t fidget.
• Know the language requirements. Check if you are permitted to use a more casual, conversational tone and first-person pronouns, or do you need to keep a more formal, academic tone?

Group Presentation

• All of the above applies, however you are working as part of a group. So how should you approach group work?
• Firstly, if you are not assigned to a group by your lecturer/tutor, choose people based on their availability and accessibility. If you cannot meet face-to-face you may schedule online meetings.
• Get to know each other. It’s easier to work with friends than strangers.
• Also consider everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. This will involve a discussion that will often lead to task or role allocations within the group, however, everyone should be carrying an equal level of the workload.
• Some group members may be more focused on getting the script written, with a different section for each team member to say. Others may be more experienced with the presentation software and skilled in editing and refining power point slides so they are appropriate for the presentation. Use one visual aid (one set of power point slides) for the whole group. Take turns presenting information and ideas.
• Be patient and tolerant with each other’s learning style and personality. Do not judge people in your group based on their personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender, age, or cultural background.
• Rehearse as a group, more than once. Keep rehearsing until you have seamless transitions between speakers. Ensure you thank the previous speaker and introduce the one following you. If you are rehearsing online, but have to present in-person, try to schedule some face-to-face time that will allow you to physically practice using the technology and classroom space of the campus.
• For further information on working as a group see:

Working as a group – my.UQ – University of Queensland

Writing Your Presentation

Approach the oral presentation task just as you would any other assignment. Review the available topics, do some background reading and research to ensure you can talk about the topic for the appropriate length of time and in an informed manner. Break the question down as demonstrated in Chapter 17 Breaking Down an Assignment. Where it differs from writing an essay is that the information in the written speech must align with the visual aid. Therefore, with each idea, concept or new information you write, think about how this might be visually displayed through minimal text and the occasional use of images. Proceed to write your ideas in full, but consider that not all information will end up on a power point slide. After all, it is you who are doing the presenting , not the power point. Your presentation skills are being evaluated; this may include a small percentage for the actual visual aid. This is also why it is important that EVERYONE has a turn at speaking during the presentation, as each person receives their own individual grade.

Using Visual Aids

A whole chapter could be written about the visual aids alone, therefore I will simply refer to the key points as noted by my.UQ

To keep your audience engaged and help them to remember what you have to say, you may want to use visual aids, such as slides.

When designing slides for your presentation, make sure:

• any text is brief, grammatically correct and easy to read. Use dot points and space between lines, plus large font size (18-20 point).
• Resist the temptation to use dark slides with a light-coloured font; it is hard on the eyes
• if images and graphs are used to support your main points, they should be non-intrusive on the written work

Images and Graphs

• Your audience will respond better to slides that deliver information quickly – images and graphs are a good way to do this. However, they are not always appropriate or necessary.

When choosing images, it’s important to find images that:

• support your presentation and aren’t just decorative
• are high quality, however, using large HD picture files can make the power point file too large overall for submission via Turnitin
• you have permission to use (Creative Commons license, royalty-free, own images, or purchased)
• suggested sites for free-to-use images: Openclipart – Clipping Culture ; Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash ; Pxfuel – Royalty free stock photos free download ; When we share, everyone wins – Creative Commons

This is a general guide. The specific requirements for your course may be different. Make sure you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you’re unsure how to meet them.

Using Visual Aids Effectively

Too often, students make an impressive power point though do not understand how to use it effectively to enhance their presentation.

• Rehearse with the power point.
• Keep the slides synchronized with your presentation; change them at the appropriate time.
• Refer to the information on the slides. Point out details; comment on images; note facts such as data.
• Don’t let the power point just be something happening in the background while you speak.
• Write notes in your script to indicate when to change slides or which slide number the information applies to.
• Pace yourself so you are not spending a disproportionate amount of time on slides at the beginning of the presentation and racing through them at the end.
• Practice, practice, practice.

Nonverbal Communication

It is clear by the name that nonverbal communication are the ways that we communicate without speaking. Many people are already aware of this, however here are a few tips that relate specifically to oral presentations.

Being confident and looking confident are two different things. Fake it until you make it.

• Avoid slouching or leaning – standing up straight instantly gives you an air of confidence.
• Move! When you’re glued to one spot as a presenter, you’re not perceived as either confident or dynamic. Use the available space effectively, though do not exaggerate your natural movements so you look ridiculous.
• If you’re someone who “speaks with their hands”, resist the urge to constantly wave them around. They detract from your message. Occasional gestures are fine.
• Be animated, but don’t fidget. Ask someone to watch you rehearse and identify if you have any nervous, repetitive habits you may be unaware of, for example, constantly touching or ‘finger-combing’ your hair, rubbing your face.
• Avoid ‘voice fidgets’ also. If you needs to cough or clear your throat, do so once then take a drink of water.
• Avoid distractions. No phone turned on. Water available but off to one side.
• Keep your distance. Don’t hover over front-row audience members; this can be intimidating.
• Have a cheerful demeaner. You do not need to grin like a Cheshire cat throughout the presentation, yet your facial expression should be relaxed and welcoming.
• Maintain an engaging TONE in your voice. Sometimes it’s not what you’re saying that is putting your audience to sleep, it’s your monotonous tone. Vary your tone and pace.
• Don’t read your presentation – PRESENT it! Internalize your script so you can speak with confidence and only occasionally refer to your notes if needed.
• Lastly, make good eye contact with your audience members so they know you are talking with them, not at them. You’re having a conversation. Watch the link below for some great speaking tips, including eye contact.

Below is a video of some great tips about public speaking from Amy Wolff at TEDx Portland [1]

• Wolff. A. [The Oregonion]. (2016, April 9). 5 public speaking tips from TEDxPortland speaker coach [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNOXZumCXNM&ab_channel=TheOregonian ↵

communication of thought by word

Academic Writing Skills Copyright © 2021 by Patricia Williamson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

14.3: Importance of Oral Presentations

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 83686

• Arley Cruthers
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University

In the workplace, and during your university career, you will likely be asked to give oral presentations. An oral presentation is a key persuasive tool. If you work in marketing, for example, you will often be asked to “pitch” campaigns to clients. Even though these pitches could happen over email, the face-to-face element allows marketers to connect with the client, respond to questions, demonstrate their knowledge and bring their ideas to life through storytelling.

In this section, we’ll focus on public speaking. While this section focuses on public speaking advocacy, you can bring these tools to everything from a meeting where you’re telling your colleagues about the results of a project to a keynote speech at a conference.

Imagine your favourite public speaker. When Meggie (one of the authors of this section) imagines a memorable speaker, she often thinks of her high school English teacher, Mrs. Permeswaran. You may be skeptical of her choice, but Mrs. Permeswaran captured the students’ attention daily. How? By providing information through stories and examples that felt relatable, reasonable, and relevant. Even with a room of students, Meggie often felt that the English teacher was just talking to her . Students worked hard, too, to listen, using note-taking and subtle nods (or confused eyebrows) to communicate that they cared about what was being said.

Now imagine your favourite public speaker. Who comes to mind? A famous comedian like Jen Kirkman? An ac

tivist like Laverne Cox? Perhaps you picture Barack Obama. What makes them memorable for you? Were they funny? Relatable? Dynamic? Confident? Try to think beyond what they said to how they made you feel . What they said certainly matters, but we are often less inclined to remember the what without a powerful how — how they delivered their message; how their performance implicated us or called us in; how they made us feel or how they asked us to think or act differently.

In this chapter, we provide an introduction to public speaking by exploring what it is and why it’s impactful as a communication process. Specifically, we invite you to consider public speaking as a type of advocacy. When you select information to share with others, you are advocating for the necessity of that information to be heard. You are calling on the audience and calling them in to listen to your perspective. Even the English teacher above was advocating that sentence structure and proper writing were important ideas to integrate. She was a trusted speaker, too, given her credibility.

Before we continue our conversation around advocacy, let’s first start with a brief definition of public speaking.

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

8.2: The Purposes of Public Speaking

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 79283

• Keith Green, Ruth Fairchild, Bev Knudsen, & Darcy Lease-Gubrud
• Ridgewater College via Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Learning Objectives

After completing this section, students should be able to:

• describe how public speaking differs from Interpersonal Communication and Small Group Communication.
• explain the societal value of public speaking.
• explain the personal benefits to learning public speaking.
• apply the traits of a good speech in creating and presenting a speech.
• describe the general speech purposes.

The oldest form of public communication and the precursor to mass media is the simple act of one person rising and expressing their thoughts to the group. Public discourse is the foundation of society; it is how groups of people address and resolve differences collectively and peacefully. With the rise of democracy in Ancient Greece, the value of public speaking gained prominence. A citizen's ability to speak their mind in public was highly valued and a sign of civic engagement.

Although we have so many avenues to express ourselves, from in person to online, the ability to craft and share a thoughtful, intelligent message is still an important skill. For a person's career, civic involvement, and political engagement, becoming proficient in public speaking is a highly valuable.

Public speaking has three striking characteristics that set it off from interpersonal communication and small group communication.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Image 1

First, public speaking is the act of one person speaking to many . Instead of focusing on an interactive nature, public speaking focuses on one person, the speaker, developing and presenting a message to a group of individuals. Second, public speaking is a more formal presentation, meaning it is bound by specific strategies and techniques. Good public speaking requires more planning, development, and self-reflexiveness, than the other two contexts. Third, in the other two contexts, we see all members communicating from a position of shared, equal responsibility. In public speaking, the speaker bears more responsibility as the message is one-directional, and the feedback the speaker receives from the audience is subtler, such as facial expressions, body posture, and fidgeting. Public speaking is still an interaction, just like interpersonal and small group, but the responsibility for success is less balanced with more responsibility being placed on the speaker.

Given the fear that most people have of public speaking, it is reasonable to ask why we engage in such an intimidating process. The fear of public speaking is common, often ranked as one of the top fears we have. A Gallup poll from 2001 found that 40% of respondents listed public speaking as their greatest fear, second only to a fear of snakes. Given a choice, people preferred dying over giving a speech. Even with this high degree of anxiety, public speaking retains a valuable place in our culture for several reasons.

Societal Functions

Public speaking has a long, illustrious history in the United States. The very formation of the U.S. political system and society is firmly rooted in wise people speaking their minds in public settings, engaging in spirited debate and discussion, and working collaboratively to find the best path for the country. Our country is founded on the premise that individuals, working together, can govern themselves. Public speaking is the tool by which this process occurs.

Public speaking allows for the relatively quick dissemination of information to a group of individuals.

If a person has much to share with a group, presenting the information via public speaking can be a fast process. A classroom lecture is a typical example. However, a question that begs to be asked is how effective such dissemination is in achieving this goal. In lecture, approximately 5-15% of the material is retained by the student; hence, the speaker (the teacher in this case) must realize this limitation and be willing to use public speaking as a starting point, using other follow up methods to enhance retention of the information.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Image 2

Public speaking allows individuals or groups to attempt to bring about social or political change.

We have a long history in this country of using our freedom of speech to change what we don't like. The women's movement and the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, and the TEA party movement of the early 21st century are examples of such a process occurring. Individuals see something happening around them they do not like, and they use public speaking to make others aware of the problem and advocate a way to change the situation.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Image 3

Public speaking allows communities to express common goals, concerns, and values.

We see speeches of commemoration at Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and the Fourth of July. The speeches remind us of who we are as a nation, and they express common values. Attending a Sunday sermon is the same. Churches, mosques, and synagogues exist for a group of individuals to share common values and worldviews. The sermon is the central feature which pulls the community members together, the faith leader giving voice to that common world view.

Public speaking allows members of a democratic society, such as the United States, to actively debate issues of concern.

We tend to take for granted our First Amendment right to openly and clearly disagree with our governmental structures on issues of concern. We have the legal right, and obligation some would say, to speak out in opposition to those things with which we disagree. Except for advocating violence, we can speak out against our mayors, governors, and presidents, and no one has the right to squelch our voice. When we speak out in a public forum, we are participating in the process of self-governance by exercising our freedom of speech.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Image 4

Personal Benefits

In addition, to the role of public speaking in our American society, becoming competent as a public speaker benefits us personally.

Managing Anxiety

Given the anxiety about public speaking, and our need to confront and manage that anxiety, we build self-confidence. Accepting and working with our speech anxiety gives us experience in facing situations in which we are being judged and evaluated. Learning how to confront fear in public speaking gives us tools to use to confront fears in other situations as well.

Managing Our Self-Presentation

We learn to monitor and manage our self-presentation. Since the vast majority of communication occurs nonverbally, a competent public speaker knows how to manage their entire physical package to present themselves most effectively, confidently, and powerfully. Just as with confronting our anxiety, being able to self-reflexively manage our self-presentation carries over into all aspects of our professional and personal lives. Although talent and ability is a significant part of career success, communication ability sets people off as especially competent and professional. The ability to engage in effective self-presentation can be a deciding factor in getting a job, being successful in the job, and advancing in our careers.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Image 5

Packaging Information for Others

We learn how to package information to benefit others. Good speakers are highly receiver-oriented. We are very concerned about giving thoughtful, well organized, easily followed, and engaging presentations. The ability to create messages fitting these standards will serve any of us well in a variety of professional and personal settings. Many people have good ideas, but not everyone can communicate them well to others. In public speaking, we learn how to package our message to best fit the audience we have at the moment.

Unfortunately, for most people our exposure to public speaking has left us with a distorted view of what makes a "good" speech. Virtually anytime we ask a class, "What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of listening to a speech," the answer is "boring." This does not have to be the case; it is the job of the speaker to make choices that directly influence how interesting or boring a speech is going to be.

As speakers, we have the obligation and ability to choose how effectively and dynamically we will present ourselves and the information to the audience. We can give interesting, dynamic, energetic, and engaging speeches. Each of us has experienced teachers who were boring and monotone, but we have also experienced teachers who were dynamic and energetic. The latter group chose to make the speeches (lectures) more interesting. To make a speech more interesting and effective, we need to understand what makes a good speech:

• A good speech is well structured and signposted to enhance clarity and memory value. A good speech is organized and easily followed with clear, obvious transitions. Our job as speakers is to present a message clearly and thoughtfully, and clear structure facilitates that.
• A good speech sounds like "organized conversation." The phrase is meant to invoke the image of a speaker presenting naturally and comfortably; just talking to the audience, in an organized, easily followed manner.
• A good speech has a purpose, clear to the audience and to which the speaker adheres. Good speakers make their purpose clear and they fulfill that. They do not wander, drift about, shift purposes, or mislead the audience. They do not start off informing the audience, and then suddenly shift to persuasion.
• A good speaker is active, not passive. Too many speakers, especially novice speakers, tend to use the "open my mouth, let the words fall out" approach to speaking. This thoughtless approach to public speaking is not very effective. Good speakers make choices, determining throughout their speech the best strategy for the given audience. Through the preparation and practice process, we make decisions based on what we think will increase the likelihood of success. Such strategic thinking requires careful consideration of the topic, the audience, the speaker, and knowledge of the interaction of these three components.
• A good speaker works to create immediacy with the audience. Immediacy is a sense of connection; that the speaker, the topic, and the audience are all working together . Good speakers see a speech as a time to share a message with an audience, building a bridge between the speaker and the audience. Too often novice speakers see the audience as a barrier to success, a collective of judgmental individuals out to embarrass the speaker. However, that is simply not true of most audiences. Audiences want the speech to be good because it validates the time spent listening, it is more enjoyable, and it simply makes the time go faster. If a speaker taps into the audience's interests and personality, they can be quite effective in engaging the audience. Such engagement does not happen automatically; it is the result of thoughtful planning and preparation.

Video \(\PageIndex{1}\): Video 1 youtu.be/i0a61wFaF8A

The public speaking situation is quite different from interpersonal communication and small group communication. The degree of advanced planning, of conscious decision making, and of communicator responsibility is much higher when giving a speech. We have been taught when a person goes to the front of the room to speak, the speaker is now "in charge" of the event. We must meet that expectation, take charge of the event, and fulfill our responsibilities for success. Speeches are only as good as the audience thinks they are; the speaker must rise to the challenge of presenting a good speech.

When developing a speech, we need to know why we are speaking. Even before considering the topic, we need to know if our purpose is to inform, to persuade, to entertain, or if it is a special occasion.

Speeches to Inform

Speeches to inform are those in which we are aiming to enlighten or to further educate the audience, but in an objective, non-directive manner. We provide the information about the topic to the audience, but we are not directing the audience to believe, feel, or act in a specific manner. There are three types of informative speeches.

• Report speech . A speech to report is one in which we take a single body of information, analyze it for the important points, then present a summary of those important points . This is common in a business setting. For example, if ACME Industries is considering making and selling a new product, various divisions will do research to determine the likelihood of the product being a success and profitable. Once this feasibility research is done and compiled into a single report, a single person or a group will then present the key findings to the management so they can decide on the course of action to take.
• Demonstration speech . These are classic "how to" speeches, usually arranged in a step-by-step pattern. For example, Mary may give a speech on how to be creative with Ramen noodles. She will progress, chronologically, through a series of steps the audience can then follow on their own.
• Explanation speech . Speeches of explanation are presentations drawing from multiple sources, designed to generally enlighten the audience about a given topic. They are not designed to show how to do something, but are for generally increasing the audience's knowledge about the topic. Instead of speaking on how to make Ramen noodles, Mary may explain how good nutrition aids classroom performance in college.

Speeches to Persuade

Speeches to persuade are those in which we are aiming to influence the audience in some fashion. They are subjective and highly directive. The speaker has a bias toward a specific belief, attitude, or action, and the speaker works to direct the audience in what to believe, what opinion to have, or what action to undertake.

In persuasion, the issue of ethics becomes paramount. Some students erroneously believe that speakers always have to give both sides of the issue to be ethical, but that is not true. When Lisa shops for a car, she knows the salesperson is out to persuade her to buy; thus, she expects messages designed to urge her to that action. As long as the salesperson gives accurate, verifiable, and truthful information, there is no ethical violation.

It is our job to provide the audience with the most accurate information we can find, and to present that information honestly, not distorting it. We must cite our sources to give due credit, and the topic should be one that can be justified as beneficial to the audience, not just to the speaker.

There are three types of persuasive speeches.

• Persuasive speeches to influence beliefs . A belief is what we hold to be true or false . For example, the knowledge that the Earth rotates around the sun is a belief; we believe it to be factual information. The idea that smoking can cause cancer is a belief. If we try to persuade the audience consuming too much fat can cause colon cancer, we are trying to get the audience to believe what is true or false about the impact of fat in our diets.
• Persuasive speeches to influence attitudes . We attempt to influence how an audience judges an event or idea; the speaker is trying to influence the audience's opinion of something. For these speeches, the speaker is attempting to make the audience think of the topic on a scale of good to bad, or desirable to not desirable. To argue the Governor of Minnesota is doing a good job (or a bad job) is an attempt to influence an attitude or opinion. With statements like these it is not a matter of true or false, black or white. It is a matter of placing the Governor on a range of opinion from highly positive to highly negative.
• Persuasive speeches of actuation (or action) . We try to get the audience to engage in a specific behavior. Advertising is a prime example. We are asked to have a positive opinion of a product, and then to act by purchasing.

The three types of persuasive speeches build on each other. If Yousef is going to give a speech of actuation calling for the audience to donate blood during Ridgewater College's annual blood drive, he will need to show the audience there is a need for blood (a belief), that donating blood is a good thing to do (an attitude), and how to participate in the blood drive (an action).

Speeches to Entertain

Although not commonly done in an introductory Communication Studies class, there is a third general speech purpose: a speech to entertain. We would hope all speeches are entertaining in some fashion, whether through humor, interest, or seriousness, so the audience found the speech engaging and intriguing. A true speech to entertain, however, is one in which the primary focus is to generate laughter. In other words, they are speeches intended to be funny.

These are still speeches in that they are organized, have a clear structure, and flow well, but they have as their overall goal the creation of laughter in the audience. The speaker usually has an underlying serious informative or persuasive point, but it is explored and developed through the use of humor. Commencement addresses, especially by those delivered by comedians or comic actors, like Tom Hanks, are typically structured this way. The speaker has a serious point to make but develops it in a humorous manner. These are common at events such as celebratory dinners or awards banquets.

Special Occasion Speeches

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Image 6 Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Image 7 Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Image 8

A special occasion speech is just what the name states: speeches given at special events. This is actually a very common type of speaking. Special occasion speeches are designed to fit the specific event at which they are being given. While each one has its own unique guidelines, the key point is to develop the speech consistent with that occasion.

Some common special occasion speeches include:

Eulogy : a speech given at a funeral or memorial service to honor the deceased.

Introduction : a speech given to introduce a speaker to an audience.

Toast : a speech given honoring a person or group, such as a wedding toast.

Giving an Award : a speech given to bestow an honor on a person.

Accepting an Award : a speech given to communicate appreciation for an award.

Commencement: a speech given at a graduation, typically addressing the past (the work done to acheive the goal) and the future (challenging the graduates to learn more, help others, get involved in social issues, or otherwise continue personal growth).

Generally special occasion speeches are fairly short and focused on the event at hand. Humor is commonly used, even with many eulogies, but only when appropriate for the event and audience.

The terms and concepts students should be familiar with from this section include:

The Nature of Public Speaking

The Value of Public Speaking

• Societal functions
• Personal benefits

A Good Speech

General Speech Purposes

• to demonstrate
• To entertain
• Introduction
• Giving an Award
• Accepting an Award
• Commencement

Gallup. ( 2001, March 19). Snakes Top List of Americans' Fears. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1891/snak...ans-fears.aspx

Jerz's Literacy Weblog (est. 1999)

Oral presentation tips: how to deliver a speech for school or work.

Jerz >  Writing > [ Academic |  Technical ] This document briefly describes how to  write and deliver a formal oral presentation on an academic or professional subject. It should be useful for anyone who wants to know how to speak in public.

Note: by “formal presentation,” I don’t necessarily mean a Shakespeare monologue or a scientific treatise on robot-assisted microsurgery. Giving an oral presentation on  any subject–your favorite book, current events, a family story–can be “formal” and “technical” whenever its primary purpose is to communicate complex information.

The  content is the most obvious component of any oral presentation — after all, if you are talking, you had better have something worthwhile to say.  But a presentation is only as effective as its  delivery .

Part 1: Planning the Content

1.  Determine your goals. 2.  Prepare your material. 3.  Study a model. 4.  Arrange with your strongest points first . 5. Practice, practice, practice .

Part 2: Delivering the Content

6.  Make eye contact with your audience. 7. Engage actively with the audience. 8. A slide show is not a speech. 9.  Watch the time! 10.  Take questions in the middle, not the end?

1) Determine Your Goals as a Speaker

2) Prepare your material

Plan. Practice. Keep what’s good and try again. 

Good speakers usually aim to look like they are speaking effortlessly, tossing off words as they come to mind. What you don’t see is the preparation that paved the way for the polished performance. It’s all an act! You can do it too, if you plan ahead.

Once you know what your goal is, and you know what your audience wants, you can start strategizing. There is no single strategy that will guarantee success. How you plan depends on many variables.

How many minutes long is your speech? About how many words do you speak per minute?

Will your audience be lost if you use jargon? Will they feel talked down to if you spend time defining terms they already know?

Do you expect that your audience will disagree with you? (If so, you might need to give more examples and more evidence and spend more time addressing reasonable objections in order to sound convincing, which may mean talking a little faster.)

Do you expect your audience already agrees with the position you will take? (If so, they may check out if your speech simply rehashes arguments they already accept without question. What can you say to an audience that already agrees with you? Why would you listen to a speaker who is restating things you already accept as the truth?)

Graphics, inspirational quotations, and anecdotes are all well-respected methods of maintaining audience interest. However, Pinterest clip art, fancy computer transitions between slides, and vaudeville tricks get old pretty quickly (see Don McMillan’s hilarious “ Death by Powerpoint “), and they eat up time that you could use more effectively.

3) Study a Model

The internet is of course full of examples of good speeches, but the YouTube users who vote on videos may not have much in common with the audience who will hear your oral presentation.

Do you have access to speeches that your discourse community values? Your instructor or supervisor may not have ready access to video recordings from last year’s class or last quarter’s budget meeting, but you can pay attention to the speaking techniques deployed by people with authority in your field.

For instance, I have a colleague who never says, “This is taking too long, and I’m watching the clock, so let’s get on with it already.” Instead, this person says, “I’m conscious of everyone’s time, so shall we move on to the next item?”

Bear in mind that

• if you have been assigned to deliver a speech that defends a position on a topic (such as, whether Huckleberry Finn should be taught in middle school)…
• but your instructor usually refrains from stating any one answer is the best (preferring instead to present several viewpoints and letting the students decide for themselves)…
• then your instructor’s open-ended lecture (intended to spark a discussion) is not a good model of a position statement (intended to showcase your ability to latch onto a specific solution).

While this handout aims to provide general tips, you should ignore any general tip that contradicts something specific you learn about the goals, context, or genre of the specific speech you are preparing.

General Model

Successful oral presentations typically share some basic characteristics, owing to the nature of the spoken word.

• Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
• Tell them what you told them.

When we read, we can go back and reread passages we skimmed over the first time, and we can skip ahead when we’re bored. In a live oral presentation, the audience can’t re-read or skip ahead. If the audience doesn’t know why they are listening to your anecdote about winning the spelling bee, or why they should care what version of the software was installed on the computer that you used to crunch your numbers, their attention will wander and it will be hard to get it back.

When we listen, we gratefully cling to orientation phrases that help us understand what the whole shape of a speech is, where we are within the overall structure, and when we are transitioning from one section to another.

Your specific occasion for delivering a speech may involve specific contextual details that don’t mesh with the general advice I’m providing here.

• Introduction :   "I am Pinky J. Witzowitz from the U.S. Department of Bureaucracy, and I have been asked to speak for 20 minutes on 'The Government's Plan for Preventing Situation X in America's Heartland.'"
• "Situation X is the worst thing that can happen to you and your family." [ Startling claim ; follow up by citing the source of this quote, or giving evidence that supports it.]
• "It happened once to a family in Dubuque, and they were never heard from again." [ Anecdote ; follow up with details.]
• "I am here today to tell you how to prevent this terrible tragedy from striking you." [ Demonstrates relevance ; move directly to your  road map ]
• Main Content :  Put up a slide with topics to cover, a specific problem to solve, or a series of questions to answer. Promise that your talk will address the material on that slide. You might even return to that slide each time you start a new subsection, with the current place in the talk highlighted.
• Questions/Comments from the Audience? Even though most people save the question period until the end, they lose the opportunity to modify their conclusion to address the interests of the audience.
• Recap :  Our earnest “Situation X” speaker might give microencapsulated answers to all the questions on the main road map:  "We have learned that Situation X is a blah blah blah; that we should all care about it because yada, yada, yada..."
• Wrap it up : After reminding the audience how all these factors fit together, the speaker might say,  "Now that you understand how the U.S. Department of Bureaucracy helps you keep Situation X out of your life, please take one of our pamphlets home to your family and put it by the telephone where you can get it in an emergency; your family will thank you."
• Invite Questions :   If there is time, and if you haven’t already done so.

4) Arrange with Your Strongest Points First

In rare cases — such as when you are facing a hostile audience, you might want to start out by emphasizing where you agree with your audience, and then carefully working your way towards your most divisive, most daring claims.

• If the question is actually important to your talk,  you’ll probably be able to answer right away.
• If you can’t answer right away, or you don’t want to take the time, just promise you’ll follow up via e-mail , and then go right back to your presentation. Most  audience members will probably have been annoyed by the interruption.  They will be  delighted that you  didn’t take the questioner’s bait .

5) Practice, Practice, Practice.

Set a timer, and deliver your speech to a willing co-worker or family member, your pet fish, or the bathroom mirror.

My students are often surprised at how hard it is to fill up 3 minutes for an informal practice speech early in the term, and how hard it is to fit everything they want to say into a 10-minute formal speech later in the term.

Once you have the right amount of content, make a video recording of yourself practicing. If you plan to show a video clip, or ad-lib an explanation of a diagram, or load a website, or pass out paper handouts, or saw an assistant in half, actually do it while the camera is rolling, so that you know exactly how much time it takes.

Time it out.

• Script out a powerful introduction and conclusion.
• Know how long each section of your speech should take.
• which example or anecdote you will cut if you are running long?
• what additional example you can introduce if you need to fill time?

If you know your conclusion takes you 90 seconds to deliver, make sure to start your conclusion when you have at least 90 seconds left.

At several key points during your speech, maybe while you are playing a video or while the audience is taking in a complex image, glance at the clock and check to see — are you on track?

If you notice you’re starting Section 3 60 seconds later than you had intended, try to make up for time by rushing through your second example in section 3 and cutting the third example in section 4, so that you still have the full 90 seconds at the end to deliver that powerful conclusion.

Technological Considerations

• Do you know how to connect your computer to the overhead projector? (If you don’t know, who does?)
• What will you do if you can’t get your computer connected to the projector? (Back in 2003, when I applied for my current job at Seton Hill University, I was asked to give a teaching demonstration. I couldn’t get my laptop to work with the overhead projector, but I had posted the most important links on my blog, and I had brought along a printout of my speech, just in case. My preparations have paid off, because I got the job.)
• In the room where you will be speaking, will you be using a microphone, or relying on your unamplified voice?
• Will you be able to walk around with the microphone — perhaps to gesture at details in the slides — or is the mic attached to a stand? (Do you need to borrow a laser pointer, or get a volunteer to advance slides for you?)

6) Make Eye Contact With Your Audience.

I once sat through a four-hour training session, during which this was all I could see of the instructor.

Go ahead and write your whole speech out so you can read robotically if you blank out, but you should practice your speech so you know it well enough that you can glance up from your notes and look at your audience as you speak.

7) Engage with the audience.

Pay attention to the audience, and they will pay attention to you.

Don’t try to recite from memory . If you spend your energy worrying about what you’re supposed to say next, you won’t be able to pay attention to whether the audience can hear you, or whether the overhead projections are focused.

Preparation : Set up before the audience files into their seats. If you have scheduled a presentation for a class, don’t sit in your seat like a lump while your professor calls the roll and hands out papers. Few things are more boring than watching a presenter log into the computer, fiddle with the video data projector, hunt around for the light switches, etc.

Introduction : As the audience files into their seats, have a title card displayed on the screen — or at least write your  name and the title of your talk on the whiteboard.  In a formal setting, usually a moderator will usually introduce you, so you won’t need to repeat everything the moderator says.  Avoid canned introductions like “Principal Burch, members of the faculty, and fellow students, we are gathered here today…”

Hashtag : If it’s likely that many people in your audience use the same social media network, consider encouraging them to post their thoughts there. When you introduce yourself, give your social media handle and suggest a hashtag.

Handouts : Consider distributing handouts that present the basic facts (names, dates, timelines) and your main points.  You can keep the conclusion just slightly mysterious, if you don’t want to give everything away immediately, but the idea is to free the audience from the feeling that they have to write everything down themselves. (Note: Simply printing up all the overhead slides wastes a lot of paper.)

Grabber : Grab the attention of your audience with a startling fact or claim, an inspiring quotation, or a revealing anecdote.   This is not the time to try out your nightclub act; the “grabber” is not just comic relief, it also helps you set up the problem that you are going to address.  If the audience will be diverse and general, you can use the “grabber” as a metaphor, helping the audience see why the topic is so important to you, and how it might be important to them, too.  If your audience shares your technical specialty, and thus needs no special introduction to the topic, feel free simply to state your purpose without much to-do; but bear in mind that even technical audiences don’t want to be bored.

Road Map : Once you have established the problem or the main point of your talk, let the audience know how you are going to get to a solution.  You might put up a series of questions on a slide, then as your talk progresses, proceed to answer each one.  You might break each question down into a series of smaller questions, and answer each one of these in turn.  Each time you finish a subsection, return to the road map, to help your audience keep track of where you have been and where you are going.

Conclusion : To give your presentation closure, return to the “grabber”, and extend it, modify it, or otherwise use it to help drive home your main point.  Recap your main points, and demonstrate how they all fit together into a thought that the audience members can take with them.

8) A Slide Show Is Not a Speech

Don’t read word-for-word with your nose buried in a stack of papers . If you bother to show up to hear a person speak, how do you feel when the speaker mumbles through page after page of written text? Do you feel you should have just asked for a copy of the paper in the mail?

When you present, make every effort to include your audience; after all, they are the reason you are speaking in the first place.

If you do feel that you must write out your speech word-for-word, you should be familiar enough with it that you don’t need to look at the paper all the time. (And hold the page up when you glance at it, rather than bending down to look at it.)

9) Watch the time!

To help pace yourself, at the top of each page of your notes,  write down what time it should be ; as you turn each page, you can glance at the clock and see whether you are on track.

(The first time I gave this advice to a technical writing class, I mimed the action of “looking at the clock” — and noticed that I was running ten minutes behind, eating into time that I had promised to a student for an in-class testing session.  That was a rather humbling experience!)

See the “preparation” section above. If you have already practiced your speech and timed out the various sections, you’ll know whether you are running long. If you are, don’t talk faster — cut  something that you already marked out as optional.

Decide in advance which examples, which anecdotes, which subsections you can drop, without damaging the whole presentation.

I was at a conference in 1998 where the first speaker talked for 40 minutes — double  her allotted time.  (Why the moderator allowed this is a mystery to me.)

• None of the other speakers on the panel felt like cutting their talks to compensate.
• The result was that the last scheduled speaker — who had paid for an international plane ticket and a week in a hotel — did not get to speak at all.

10) Take questions in the middle, not at the end?

The benefits include:

• If you spark a good Q & A session, your audience will remember and appreciate it.
• If nobody has any questions,  you can just fill up the space with more of your own material .  That would be much harder to do if you have already wrapped up your talk and had nothing left to say.
• If you really know your material, you can  adjust your conclusion to address the questions raised by the audience.  Even if someone in the audience steals a little of your thunder by bringing up points you were saving for your big finish, you will appear smart for having predicted that audience response. At the same time, someone in your audience will feel smart for having anticipated what you were going to say.

Dennis G. Jerz , 01/27/2009 07:24:28 Oct, 1999 — first written 03 Dec, 2000 — posted here 03 June 2003 — tweaked and updated 30 Oct 2011 — updated and added video links 31 May 2016 — major update; separated into “preparation” and “presentation” sections. 26 Jan 2018 — blackboard -> whiteboard

50 thoughts on “ Oral Presentation Tips: How to Deliver a Speech for School or Work ”

Thanks alot for your teachings

Thank a lot , really great tip for oral presentation, i’ll implement these tips, and will let you know.

Very helpful tips.

this is awfully helpful. I am a teacher in France and my students have to do presentations in English. I wish they could read this and understand.

Thank you for these very useful tips on Oral presentation. I am taking an Organizational Behavior class and need to do a 5 minute oral presentation on a real life situation about Conflict Management in the Workplace. I am not sure how to structure or begin the presentation.

I like it Really helpful for me

Thank you for helping me to do my presentation…..and I have learned so much from oral presentation.

thankyou thankyou thankyou this helped me so much!!! : )

thankyou thankyou thankyou this helped me so much in english!!! : )

Thanks. Really helpful

Hi, I going to do 3 minute presentation and my topic is My son. what is a best tips to talk about the this topic. I am not sure where to start. Any tips to help me with.

Is that the topic you were assigned? Are you taking a public speaking class, a child development class, a class in writing personal memoirs, or are you learning English as a second language? I don’t know how your instructor will evaluate your work, so I am not sure how to help.

You might find it useful to look at this handout on writing personal essays. http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/personal-essays/

Hi, I going to do minute presentation and my topic is My son. what is a best tips to talk about the this topic. I am not sure where to start. Any tips to help me with.

This sort of helped

Denise Gillen Caralli liked this on Facebook.

Enter your comment here…Thanks a lot… I will follow your instructions..I’m hopeful those tips will work. .. Thanks once again….

Thanks so much will follow your instruction tomorrow where I will be having presentation with 180 Head masters about suplimetary feeding on their hunger striken ares

Yeah ,thanks and good luck to all of you from a powerful Jamaican girl

That’s great… It will work well for those who are aiming for like me. Thanks!

The tips are totally handy until now I am still applying it.

Appreciate it. =)

Very helpful for my presentation. Thanks!

I have learned a lot on this…thanks

Thanks a lot I have learned so much on this

I suppose to give out a presentation on Monday on someone or something in either an athlete or an actor and I don’t know how to start

i have a question i am supposed to give a speech but it has to have a power point or a drama thing the only problem is that i can’t have a power point because it won’t work into my speech and neither will a drama thing what should i do?

I suggest you talk to whoever set up the requirement for a slideshow/drama component. Maybe there is some flexibility, or maybe you’ll find a way to work that component into your speech.

Thank you heaps this really helped a lot

that is such good information and i believe im going to pass my speeches.

wow!!this are really helpfull stuff..but im just not confident enough to stand infront of all those people..wish i could do it without them looking at me

blind fold them! just joking…I’m getting ready to do mine and I’m having the same problem as you.

this is a helpfull site

this isn’t helping me with how nervous I am!! bye!!

love it really helped

thanks you are good

I have to do a presentation about “Importance of learning English”. There are 6 people in my group including myself. The presentation has to be exactly 8 minutes. We can’t use PowerPoint. Can you give us any unique, memorable and creative idea?

What are some lessons or life experiences that you find unique and memorable? I’d probably do a play, with a character who gets into trouble because he/she doesn’t know English, and then has a chance to correct those problems by demonstrating how learning English can fix the problems.

Hello mr.Dennis,I go straight to it.how can I become the most sought after Master of Ceremony(M.C.)/tv show presenter extra-ordinaire in my country before going international?any useful tips?

Sorry, that question is not something I cover on this page.

really well writen loved how you added steps so its easy to follow clear easily can be understaned and really helps us and gives us tips that we should actually think about and use at times

Yeah! I found it quite impressive. I hope it’z gonna be helpful for me to develop my speech techniques.

Nice tips….i think it will help me. but it’s too lengthy,it takes so much of time to read.

This really helps to prepare for all sort of things, Thanks a lot

Really helpful! Thank you

Pingback: Oral Presentation Readings « readwriteredroom

i love this helpful tips of oral presentation.. hope to visit this again or i just make a hard copy of this… thank you very much for that…

it was quite helpful

thank you for the great tip, but my problem is actually that I have a presentation on ‘All About Me’ and I have to keep the audience ‘engaged’ like by making a guessing game or something. If anyone has any other ideas please help!!

This may help: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/showing/

This really helped me prepare my oral presentation…thanks very much!!!!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

In the social and behavioral sciences, an oral presentation assignment involves an individual student or group of students verbally addressing an audience on a specific research-based topic, often utilizing slides to help audience members understand and retain what they both see and hear. The purpose is to inform, report, and explain the significance of research findings, and your critical analysis of those findings, within a specific period of time, often in the form of a reasoned and persuasive argument. Oral presentations are assigned to assess a student’s ability to organize and communicate relevant information  effectively to a particular audience. Giving an oral presentation is considered an important learning skill because the ability to speak persuasively in front of an audience is transferable to most professional workplace settings.

Oral Presentations. Learning Co-Op. University of Wollongong, Australia; Oral Presentations. Undergraduate Research Office, Michigan State University; Oral Presentations. Presentations Research Guide, East Carolina University Libraries; Tsang, Art. “Enhancing Learners’ Awareness of Oral Presentation (Delivery) Skills in the Context of Self-regulated Learning.” Active Learning in Higher Education 21 (2020): 39-50.

Preparing for Your Oral Presentation

In some classes, writing the research paper is only part of what is required in reporting the results your work. Your professor may also require you to give an oral presentation about your study. Here are some things to think about before you are scheduled to give a presentation.

1.  What should I say?

If your professor hasn't explicitly stated what the content of your presentation should focus on, think about what you want to achieve and what you consider to be the most important things that members of the audience should know about your research. Think about the following: Do I want to inform my audience, inspire them to think about my research, or convince them of a particular point of view? These questions will help frame how to approach your presentation topic.

2.  Oral communication is different from written communication

Your audience has just one chance to hear your talk; they can't "re-read" your words if they get confused. Focus on being clear, particularly if the audience can't ask questions during the talk. There are two well-known ways to communicate your points effectively, often applied in combination. The first is the K.I.S.S. method [Keep It Simple Stupid]. Focus your presentation on getting two to three key points across. The second approach is to repeat key insights: tell them what you're going to tell them [forecast], tell them [explain], and then tell them what you just told them [summarize].

3.  Think about your audience

Yes, you want to demonstrate to your professor that you have conducted a good study. But professors often ask students to give an oral presentation to practice the art of communicating and to learn to speak clearly and audibly about yourself and your research. Questions to think about include: What background knowledge do they have about my topic? Does the audience have any particular interests? How am I going to involve them in my presentation?

4.  Create effective notes

If you don't have notes to refer to as you speak, you run the risk of forgetting something important. Also, having no notes increases the chance you'll lose your train of thought and begin relying on reading from the presentation slides. Think about the best ways to create notes that can be easily referred to as you speak. This is important! Nothing is more distracting to an audience than the speaker fumbling around with notes as they try to speak. It gives the impression of being disorganized and unprepared.

NOTE:   A good strategy is to have a page of notes for each slide so that the act of referring to a new page helps remind you to move to the next slide. This also creates a natural pause that allows your audience to contemplate what you just presented.

Strategies for creating effective notes for yourself include the following:

• Choose a large, readable font [at least 18 point in Ariel ]; avoid using fancy text fonts or cursive text.
• Use bold text, underlining, or different-colored text to highlight elements of your speech that you want to emphasize. Don't over do it, though. Only highlight the most important elements of your presentation.
• Leave adequate space on your notes to jot down additional thoughts or observations before and during your presentation. This is also helpful when writing down your thoughts in response to a question or to remember a multi-part question [remember to have a pen with you when you give your presentation].
• Place a cue in the text of your notes to indicate when to move to the next slide, to click on a link, or to take some other action, such as, linking to a video. If appropriate, include a cue in your notes if there is a point during your presentation when you want the audience to refer to a handout.
• Spell out challenging words phonetically and practice saying them ahead of time. This is particularly important for accurately pronouncing people’s names, technical or scientific terminology, words in a foreign language, or any unfamiliar words.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Kelly, Christine. Mastering the Art of Presenting. Inside Higher Education Career Advice; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Organizing the Content

In the process of organizing the content of your presentation, begin by thinking about what you want to achieve and how are you going to involve your audience in the presentation.

• Brainstorm your topic and write a rough outline. Don’t get carried away—remember you have a limited amount of time for your presentation.
• Organize your material and draft what you want to say [see below].
• Summarize your draft into key points to write on your presentation slides and/or note cards and/or handout.
• Prepare your visual aids.
• Rehearse your presentation and practice getting the presentation completed within the time limit given by your professor. Ask a friend to listen and time you.

GENERAL OUTLINE

I.  Introduction [may be written last]

• Capture your listeners’ attention . Begin with a question, an amusing story, a provocative statement, a personal story, or anything that will engage your audience and make them think. For example, "As a first-gen student, my hardest adjustment to college was the amount of papers I had to write...."
• State your purpose . For example, "I’m going to talk about..."; "This morning I want to explain…."
• Present an outline of your talk . For example, “I will concentrate on the following points: First of all…Then…This will lead to…And finally…"

II.  The Body

• Present your main points one by one in a logical order .
• Pause at the end of each point . Give people time to take notes, or time to think about what you are saying.
• Make it clear when you move to another point . For example, “The next point is that...”; “Of course, we must not forget that...”; “However, it's important to realize that....”
• Use clear examples to illustrate your points and/or key findings .
• If appropriate, consider using visual aids to make your presentation more interesting [e.g., a map, chart, picture, link to a video, etc.].

III.  The Conclusion

• Leave your audience with a clear summary of everything that you have covered.
• Summarize the main points again . For example, use phrases like: "So, in conclusion..."; "To recap the main issues...," "In summary, it is important to realize...."
• Restate the purpose of your talk, and say that you have achieved your aim : "My intention was ..., and it should now be clear that...."
• Don't let the talk just fizzle out . Make it obvious that you have reached the end of the presentation.
• Thank the audience, and invite questions : "Thank you. Are there any questions?"

NOTE: When asking your audience if anyone has any questions, give people time to contemplate what you have said and to formulate a question. It may seem like an awkward pause to wait ten seconds or so for someone to raise their hand, but it's frustrating to have a question come to mind but be cutoff because the presenter rushed to end the talk.

ANOTHER NOTE: If your last slide includes any contact information or other important information, leave it up long enough to ensure audience members have time to write the information down. Nothing is more frustrating to an audience member than wanting to jot something down, but the presenter closes the slides immediately after finishing.

Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Delivering Your Presentation

When delivering your presentation, keep in mind the following points to help you remain focused and ensure that everything goes as planned.

Pay Attention to Language!

• Keep it simple . The aim is to communicate, not to show off your vocabulary. Using complex words or phrases increases the chance of stumbling over a word and losing your train of thought.
• Emphasize the key points . Make sure people realize which are the key points of your study. Repeat them using different phrasing to help the audience remember them.
• Check the pronunciation of difficult, unusual, or foreign words beforehand . Keep it simple, but if you have to use unfamiliar words, write them out phonetically in your notes and practice saying them. This is particularly important when pronouncing proper names. Give the definition of words that are unusual or are being used in a particular context [e.g., "By using the term affective response, I am referring to..."].

Use Your Voice to Communicate Clearly

• Speak loud enough for everyone in the room to hear you . Projecting your voice may feel uncomfortably loud at first, but if people can't hear you, they won't try to listen. However, moderate your voice if you are talking in front of a microphone.
• Speak slowly and clearly . Don’t rush! Speaking fast makes it harder for people to understand you and signals being nervous.
• Avoid the use of "fillers." Linguists refer to utterances such as um, ah, you know, and like as fillers. They occur most often during transitions from one idea to another and, if expressed too much, are distracting to an audience. The better you know your presentation, the better you can control these verbal tics.
• Vary your voice quality . If you always use the same volume and pitch [for example, all loud, or all soft, or in a monotone] during your presentation, your audience will stop listening. Use a higher pitch and volume in your voice when you begin a new point or when emphasizing the transition to a new point.
• Speakers with accents need to slow down [so do most others]. Non-native speakers often speak English faster than we slow-mouthed native speakers, usually because most non-English languages flow more quickly than English. Slowing down helps the audience to comprehend what you are saying.
• Slow down for key points . These are also moments in your presentation to consider using body language, such as hand gestures or leaving the podium to point to a slide, to help emphasize key points.
• Use pauses . Don't be afraid of short periods of silence. They give you a chance to gather your thoughts, and your audience an opportunity to think about what you've just said.

Also Use Your Body Language to Communicate!

• Stand straight and comfortably . Do not slouch or shuffle about. If you appear bored or uninterested in what your talking about, the audience will emulate this as well. Wear something comfortable. This is not the time to wear an itchy wool sweater or new high heel shoes for the first time.
• Hold your head up . Look around and make eye contact with people in the audience [or at least pretend to]. Do not just look at your professor or your notes the whole time! Looking up at your your audience brings them into the conversation. If you don't include the audience, they won't listen to you.
• When you are talking to your friends, you naturally use your hands, your facial expression, and your body to add to your communication . Do it in your presentation as well. It will make things far more interesting for the audience.
• Don't turn your back on the audience and don't fidget! Neither moving around nor standing still is wrong. Practice either to make yourself comfortable. Even when pointing to a slide, don't turn your back; stand at the side and turn your head towards the audience as you speak.
• Keep your hands out of your pocket . This is a natural habit when speaking. One hand in your pocket gives the impression of being relaxed, but both hands in pockets looks too casual and should be avoided.

Interact with the Audience

• Be aware of how your audience is reacting to your presentation . Are they interested or bored? If they look confused, stop and ask them [e.g., "Is anything I've covered so far unclear?"]. Stop and explain a point again if needed.
• Check after highlighting key points to ask if the audience is still with you . "Does that make sense?"; "Is that clear?" Don't do this often during the presentation but, if the audience looks disengaged, interrupting your talk to ask a quick question can re-focus their attention even if no one answers.
• Do not apologize for anything . If you believe something will be hard to read or understand, don't use it. If you apologize for feeling awkward and nervous, you'll only succeed in drawing attention to the fact you are feeling awkward and nervous and your audience will begin looking for this, rather than focusing on what you are saying.
• Be open to questions . If someone asks a question in the middle of your talk, answer it. If it disrupts your train of thought momentarily, that's ok because your audience will understand. Questions show that the audience is listening with interest and, therefore, should not be regarded as an attack on you, but as a collaborative search for deeper understanding. However, don't engage in an extended conversation with an audience member or the rest of the audience will begin to feel left out. If an audience member persists, kindly tell them that the issue can be addressed after you've completed the rest of your presentation and note to them that their issue may be addressed later in your presentation [it may not be, but at least saying so allows you to move on].
• Be ready to get the discussion going after your presentation . Professors often want a brief discussion to take place after a presentation. Just in case nobody has anything to say or no one asks any questions, be prepared to ask your audience some provocative questions or bring up key issues for discussion.

Amirian, Seyed Mohammad Reza and Elaheh Tavakoli. “Academic Oral Presentation Self-Efficacy: A Cross-Sectional Interdisciplinary Comparative Study.” Higher Education Research and Development 35 (December 2016): 1095-1110; Balistreri, William F. “Giving an Effective Presentation.” Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition 35 (July 2002): 1-4; Creating and Using Overheads. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Enfield, N. J. How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation . New York: Basic Books, 2017; Giving an Oral Presentation. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra; Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015; Peery, Angela B. Creating Effective Presentations: Staff Development with Impact . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2011; Peoples, Deborah Carter. Guidelines for Oral Presentations. Ohio Wesleyan University Libraries; Perret, Nellie. Oral Presentations. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Speeches. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Storz, Carl et al. Oral Presentation Skills. Institut national de télécommunications, EVRY FRANCE.

Speaking Tip

Your First Words are Your Most Important Words!

Your introduction should begin with something that grabs the attention of your audience, such as, an interesting statistic, a brief narrative or story, or a bold assertion, and then clearly tell the audience in a well-crafted sentence what you plan to accomplish in your presentation. Your introductory statement should be constructed so as to invite the audience to pay close attention to your message and to give the audience a clear sense of the direction in which you are about to take them.

Lucas, Stephen. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2015.

Another Speaking Tip

Talk to Your Audience, Don't Read to Them!

A presentation is not the same as reading a prepared speech or essay. If you read your presentation as if it were an essay, your audience will probably understand very little about what you say and will lose their concentration quickly. Use notes, cue cards, or presentation slides as prompts that highlight key points, and speak to your audience . Include everyone by looking at them and maintaining regular eye-contact [but don't stare or glare at people]. Limit reading text to quotes or to specific points you want to emphasize.

• << Previous: Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Next: Group Presentations >>
• Last Updated: Mar 6, 2024 1:00 PM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/assignments

How to Give an Oral Presentation?

• Open Access
• First Online: 24 October 2021

Cite this chapter

You have full access to this open access chapter

• Samiran Nundy 4 ,
• Atul Kakar 5 &
• Zulfiqar A. Bhutta 6  

28k Accesses

1 Citations

1 Altmetric

An oral presentation is a form of communication, where you impart and then exchange information with your audience. This can be either one-way, a didactic, or two-way called a Socratic or a Dialectic presentation. There are many forms of oral presentation and you should find out where and when you are required to speak [1]. The National Training Laboratory in Maine, USA has suggested a ‘cone’ of learning or learning ‘pyramid’. In this, they have found that the most effective way of learning is through teaching others. Most students remembered only 10% of the material given in books but remembered 90% of the facts they learned when they had to teach others [2] (Fig. 38.1).

The first 30 seconds and the last 30 seconds have the most impact in a presentation. — Patricia Fripp, American author

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Similar content being viewed by others

Strategies for the Preparation and Delivery of Oral Presentation

How to Prepare and Give a Scholarly Oral Presentation

See It, Speak It, Draw It, and Learn to Communicate in Simple Language

An oral presentation is a form of communication, where you impart and then exchange information with your audience. This can be either one-way, a didactic, or two-way called a Socratic or a Dialectic presentation. There are many forms of oral presentation and you should find out where and when you are required to speak [ 1 ]. The National Training Laboratory in Maine, USA has suggested a ‘cone’ of learning or learning ‘pyramid’. In this, they have found that the most effective way of learning is through teaching others. Most students remembered only 10% of the material given in books but remembered 90% of the facts they learned when they had to teach others [ 2 ] (Fig. 38.1 ).

The Lecture is an old way of teaching and by convention called the ‘chalk and talk’ method. The talk needs to be prepared carefully but it is thought to be an ineffective way of imparting knowledge. The flow of ideas and organization of a lecture is an art. It is usually taken by a qualified person. In this, there is passive learning of the attendees as it is a one-way communication. The number of people in a lecture should be around 30 and its duration should be 15–20 minutes. In a lecture during a conference, the number of participants can vary from 50 to 1000.

Symposium —This consists of a series of lectures usually on a single selected topic. Each speaker gives a brief presentation, there is no discussion between the speakers during the presentation and finally the chairman summarizes the talks. People who speak in symposia are experts in the field and all talks are delivered in a single day.

Group discussion or Round table talk —In this, there is a face-to-face discussion between a group of people of usually 6–12 members who sit around a table. The leader initiates the talk and the other members give their opinions. Most round table sessions are fairly structured and require attention to time management and content, with intermittent audience participation.

Workshop— This is a series of lectures in a smaller group. There is an interaction between the members but it is usually at a local level.

Seminar— This is a half to full-day discussion on a particular topic with about 30–40 participants.

Debate— This is an increasingly popular format utilized in larger meetings with two speakers discussing controversy and arguing for either side. This can be through formal presentations or interactive discussions.

Retention rate of various teaching methods adapted from National Training Laboratories, Bethel, Maine, USA

All these teaching activities can now be virtual and recent circumstances have indicated that this might be the ‘new normal’. Physicians need to be accustomed to this as it may be the way forward for medical education.

2 Does the Success of an Oral Presentation Depend on the Audience?

This is generally true and a presentation works if:

The audience feels the need for the information.

Is enthusiastic.

The subject is applicable to their clinical practice.

Its content is clear and easy to grasp.

There is active audience participation.

Multiple ways of presentation are used, i.e., PowerPoint slides and videos.

3 What Is a Powerful Oral Presentation?

A powerful oral presentation can be summarized with 5 C’s

Contains C rucial information

There is a Clear style of presentation

Confidently delivered

With Concise data

The delivery is Creative and Clever

4 What Are the Steps You Should Take Before an Oral Presentation?

An oral presentation can be divided into:

A Pre-Presentation stage

The Presentation

The Post-presentation stage [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]

In the Pre-Presentation stage:

It is important to check the venue and equipment. It is always better to arrive on time, load the presentation, and recheck it in the preview room to see if the presentation is in order. You should also check with the organizer whether there is double projection, because this requires a lot of coordination and rehearsal.

Check the podium and make a mental picture of how much of the area of the podium and dais you will use during the presentation. Currently, many people follow the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) format where there is no podium and they use the entire stage for the talk. For this type of presentation, you should be a seasoned public speaker. Body language is important in this.

Find out about your target audience—general physicians, a mixed group of doctors, a specialty group, or the lay public. However, if it is a speciality lecture the content should cater only to specialists.

You should be appropriately dressed—properly and professionally.

It is always better to email the presentation in case there is a hitch in your pen drive function at the last minute.

Before planning the presentation, go through the programme of the conference as many of the topics in the session might have been covered by someone else. So, those aspects should be omitted from your talk.

The preparation time for your lecture, whether it is 10 min or 30 min long is the same as you need to review all the relevant literature before the presentation. The shorter the talk the more difficult it is to condense and give a powerful performance.

‘Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse’ are the three most important mantras for a flawless delivery.

5 How to Deliver an Oral Presentation?

Making a presentation is a skilful art, which has to be learned over years. Richard Leech, a medically qualified actor, stated that ‘Lecturing is like Acting, where you have to a tell a tale to the audience but it is more difficult than acting because you have to write the script as well’. You cannot inherit the ability to give a good lecture—it comes with repeated practice and as you lecture more you become more confident of speaking in public.

A presentation has two important components, i.e., its content and style.

The content can be further divided into introductory slides, the main text, and conclusions.

The Introduction is the most powerful part of the presentation. There are various models that have been suggested for an introduction slide.

The expected introduction would be to greet the audience and start reading the slides. However, this approach although considered polite, is benign, boring, and lacks power and passion.

Model 1–2-3 consists of, step 1 to greet the audience, step 2 pause, and step 3 is to make an attention-grabbing statement or relate a story that is linked to the presentation.

The opening few slides should make the audience believe that you are the best person to deliver this lecture and also it has important content for them (WIIFM—What’s in it for me?). In case the chairperson has not introduced you it would be relevant to provide some personal and professional information in the first few slides. Typically, the introduction should take 2–3 minutes or 10–15% of your allotted time. This is also the time you will take to establish a relationship with your audience.

Thus, the introduction slides are:

The first contact with the audience and they set the tone for the rest of the lecture.

An opportunity to grab the audience’s attention.

You can start by asking a question or pose a hypothesis to the audience.

The main body of the talk should be divided into 3–4 subheadings and each subheading should have a learning and take-home message to reduce the monotony and increase (Fig. 38.1 ) the learning. The content of the presentation should also contain the purpose of the talk. Although information repeated is important for learning, unnecessary facts are usually boring. You should use diagrams, charts, cartoons, tables, and photos to decrease the written parts.

You should use varied modes of presentation which may include PowerPoint slides, clips of videos, or discuss real-world scenarios. These make the presentation more interesting.

The Conclusions can take up the last few slides and rather than re-stating the same sentences try to find new and easily understood words.

As for the style of the presentation, it should be bold and exude confidence.

The other qualities are:

Maintain calm—Many people get anxious when it comes to an oral presentation. Mild anxiety increases the androgenic drive which makes the presentation more exciting, however, if you have moderate-to-severe anxiety it may manifest as jitteriness and you may fumble. Sometimes deep breathing exercises can help to allay symptoms of anxiety. Do not take any drugs before the presentation.

Rehearse your presentation. This has two advantages—you can do time management and you can speak with clarity on all the important slides. You should not read out the slide but use it as a point of reference to dilate on the subject. Under all circumstances, DON’T read your slides!

You should not be nervous, shuffle, fidget, and fumble once you are on stage. Even if you are anxious, like a good actor you should not show it.

A boring presentation can be judged by the non-verbal communication during it. The audience will see how many people are sleeping, busy on their cell phones and how many are learning and taking notes.

During the presentation, you should have eye contact with the audience and not with the slides.

6 What Should Be Done in the Post-Presentation Period?

You should invite questions. Do not be afraid to answer questions because you as a presenter have more knowledge about the subject than the audience [ 5 ]. The questions can be answered by saying ‘thank you, it was an intelligent question’. The answer to the question should be brief and should not be the signal to launch a second presentation.

The questions after the lecture can be divided into irrelevant . For which you need to be polite in answering, profound to which you can regret that there is a lack of time and the person can interact with you during the break or might be challenging and requires inputs from the house. You can ask for a show of hands or a debate on such challenging questions.

7 What Should Be the Speed of the Presentation?

The newsreaders on the media speak at 120–130 words per minute. You need to practice this. If you speak very fast the information is not grasped. In the case of an international talk, you need to speak slowly as language and pronunciation may be a problem for the audience [ 6 ].

8 Should You Take Short Pauses During a 30-Minute Talk?

You should not take a pause or stop the presentation as it becomes boring for the audience. There is an attention curve that is maximum in the first few minutes of the lecture and then during the last portion of the lecture (Fig. 38.1 ). However, in case the lecture is lengthy, you can change the tone of your voice or show a visual aid rather than pause. In general, avoid lectures exceeding 30 min and as a general principle, try not to exceed one slide per minute.

9 What Kind of Slides Should There Be?

The background of the slide should be such that the information written is clear; traditionally a light colour with black writing is recommended. There should be no more than 6–8 lines in a slide with not more than 8 words in a line and with proper alignment. No detailed sentences are required while making the slide [ 7 , 8 ]. Examples of good and bad slides are shown in Figs. 38.2 and 38.3 .

Example of good studies

Example of bad studies

10 What Are the Ten Steps Towards a Robust PowerPoint Presentation?

Delivering PowerPoint presentation requires skill in public speaking. Below we summarize the six steps for a power-packed presentation [ 9 ].

Step 1 —Know what are goals of your presentation. Is it to educate the audience on a naïve subject or to update existing knowledge?

Step 2 —Know your audience. It is usually said that one size does not fit all and similarly your audience may be heterogenous and your aim will be to give all of them a basic level of information. Each time there is a new audience your slides should change accordingly.

Step 3 —Prepare an outline of your talk. Each topic can be subdivided into small topics and try to focus on 3–4 subpoints in your presentation.

Step 4 —Build up your subpoints. Work on the ‘pyramidal’ approach to build up your presentation (Fig. 38.4 ).

The Minto Pyramid

Step 5 —know the layout, designs, and background available. Few of the layouts and background designs are shown (Fig. 38.5 ).

Some designs available

Step 6 —Your PowerPoints slides should be perfect. Use a font which is legible, a background colour which is soothing, and a template which suits your presentation.

Step 7 —Follow the 5/5/5 rule that is not more than five words in line, not more than five lines per slide, and no more than five text slides in a row.

Step 8— Adjust the number of slides according to the time allowed. For a five-minute presentation about 5–6 slides are recommended.

Step 9 —The slide design should match the audience and ambience.

Step 10 —Use graphs, photos, and other visual aids to decrease the monotony.

11 What Is the Conclusion for an Oral Presentation?

Conclude by recapitulating what you have said in your slides. Why did you do this study, How did you do it, what results did you get and what is your ‘take home’ message.

An Oral presentation is a powerful way of communication with the audience. It should be presented clearly and with confidence.

The Stages of an oral presentation include the pre-presentation preparation, podium presentation, and post-presentation period. An Oral presentation is an art that is learnt with time.

The Slides for an oral presentation should follow the 5 × 5 rules.

Conference Monkey Last accessed on 12th May 2020. Available on https://conferencemonkey.org/blog/whats-the-difference-between-a-conference-a-seminar-a-workshop-and-a-symposium-1075915 .

Ken Masters. Edgar Dale’s Pyramid of Learning in medical education: A literature review, Medical Teacher 2013;35:11, e1584–e1593.

Google Scholar  

Haber RJ, Lingard LA. Learning oral presentation skills: a rhetorical analysis with pedagogical and professional implications. J Gen Intern Med. 2001;16:308–14.

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLoS Comput Biol. 2007;3(4):e77.

Article   Google Scholar  

Hall GH. How to present at meetings. BMJ; 2001, London.

What’s your speech rate. Last accessed on 12th May 2020. Available on https://www.write-out-loud.com/speech-rate.html .

How to give successful oral presentation. Last accessed on 12th May 2020. Available on https://www.scientificleaders.com/presentations/ .

Top eight rules to make PowerPoint presentation. Last accessed on 12th May 2020. Available on https://www.pharmacoepi.org/pub/?id=76a123f3-c419-8689-f823-a38e28f5fd02 .

How to make & give great PowerPoint presentations (in 5 simple steps). Last accessed on 12th July 2020. Available on https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-make-and-give-great-powerpoint-presentations%2D%2Dcms-28734 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, India

Samiran Nundy

Department of Internal Medicine, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, India

Institute for Global Health and Development, The Aga Khan University, South Central Asia, East Africa and United Kingdom, Karachi, Pakistan

Zulfiqar A. Bhutta

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Nundy, S., Kakar, A., Bhutta, Z.A. (2022). How to Give an Oral Presentation?. In: How to Practice Academic Medicine and Publish from Developing Countries?. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5248-6_38

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5248-6_38

Published : 24 October 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Singapore

Print ISBN : 978-981-16-5247-9

Online ISBN : 978-981-16-5248-6

eBook Packages : Medicine Medicine (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Definition of an "Oral Presentation"

Ideas for Micro Teaching

One saying is, "If you don't strike oil in 15 minutes, stop boring." This translates to giving engaging oral presentations in the workplace and in educational settings. Oral assessments come in a variety of formats, from multimedia projects to group work to speeches. An oral presentation simply involves explaining something to an audience. In the classroom, teachers grade these oral presentations based on the quality of the information presented as well as the method used in presenting it.

An oral presentation is similar to giving a speech but is usually not just a person behind a lectern. Visual aids and teaching tools are used to further enhance the spoken words. An oral presentation can be given as an individual or as part of a group. It also might add components of technology, such as a slide show, video clip or audio recording. Another term for an oral presentation with technology or other aids is a multimedia presentation, indicating that forms of media are being used. Most oral presentations require the presenter to use a combination of spoken words and visual aids to present an idea or explanation to their audience.

An oral presentation is most often assigned as part of class coursework but can have other purposes as a teaching tool. A teacher might assign students an oral presentation on a particular topic or set of topics that requires them to learn more about the subject. The presenting students then take on a teaching role in sharing that new information to the class through their presentation. Oral presentations are effective teaching tools in this way because they add variety to the classroom and allow students the opportunity to teach one another. A person with expertise on a skill or process utilizes an oral presentation to explain their knowledge about that subject to the assembled group. The group members can follow along and learn a new skill while watching the presentation. In the classroom, students might share an oral presentation in the form of a mock trial or instructions on how play a sport. A workplace presentation might involve sharing information on new technologies or a topic presentation at a related conference.

Oral presentations incorporate a variety of skills including intonation, eye-contact, speech preparation and engaging an audience. The presenter learns to hone their public speaking skills which includes keeping track of time and offering well-researched information. The presenter might also learn multimedia skills as they prepares visual and auditory aids for his presentation as well as research skills when studying the topic. If the presentation takes place in the classroom setting, the additional skill of teaching others a new subject is another benefit.

Clearly explaining your topic and paying attention to your audience are both important aspects of giving an oral presentation. Consider how much your audience knows about your topic in advance and teach them the information they do not know. Keep in mind that you may know all aspects of your topic but that your audience may not. For example, in the workplace, someone in the technology department would need to first explain the basics of a new technology before giving an oral presentation on the subject. The assumption would be that not everyone in the audience would know basic information on the topic and therefore, the presenter needs to offer that information first. Including visual or auditory aids may be helpful for increasing the engagement level of the group by breaking up the words in the speech. Incorporating technology into your presentation can make it more entertaining for your audience as well. This may also increase the likelihood of holding their attention through the entirety of the presentation.

Teachers can assess student oral presentations in a variety of ways. The quality of the content is the first area assessed because the teacher can use a set rubric of required elements for all students. This rubric may not look at subject as much as looking for an in-depth information, well-referenced and researched presentation. Teachers look for a thorough explanation of the topic, a demonstrated solid understanding of that topic and an assessment of the quality of the speech elements. If the student speaks clearly, uses strong words and keeps focused on the topic, he will likely will earn high marks for that portion of the oral presentation. However, teachers also assess the creativity of the presentation and use of multimedia aids. The assessment may also include other criteria such as time allocation or group member participation. Students need to concentrate on all areas of the assigned rubric to put their best oral presentation forward.

Related Articles

The Advantages of Using Chalkboards in Teaching

The disadvantages of performance-based assessment.

What Is the Purpose of an Outline?

How to Give an English Class

What Are the Advantages of Authentic Assessment Over Standardized ...

For Teachers: What are the Barriers to Effective Communication in the ...

Difference Between a Speech & a Lecture

Activities for a Classroom Management Workshop

• Boise State University: Oral Presentations
• Monash University: A Guide to Oral Presentations
• University of Pittsburgh: Oral Activities in the Classroom

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

What the New Overtime Rule Means for Workers

One of the basic principles of the American workplace is that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. Simply put, every worker’s time has value. A cornerstone of that promise is the  Fair Labor Standards Act ’s (FLSA) requirement that when most workers work more than 40 hours in a week, they get paid more. The  Department of Labor ’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.

Overtime protections have been a critical part of the FLSA since 1938 and were established to protect workers from exploitation and to benefit workers, their families and our communities. Strong overtime protections help build America’s middle class and ensure that workers are not overworked and underpaid.

Some workers are specifically exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections, including bona fide executive, administrative or professional employees. This exemption, typically referred to as the “EAP” exemption, applies when: 

1. An employee is paid a salary,  

2. The salary is not less than a minimum salary threshold amount, and 

3. The employee primarily performs executive, administrative or professional duties.

While the department increased the minimum salary required for the EAP exemption from overtime pay every 5 to 9 years between 1938 and 1975, long periods between increases to the salary requirement after 1975 have caused an erosion of the real value of the salary threshold, lessening its effectiveness in helping to identify exempt EAP employees.

The department’s new overtime rule was developed based on almost 30 listening sessions across the country and the final rule was issued after reviewing over 33,000 written comments. We heard from a wide variety of members of the public who shared valuable insights to help us develop this Administration’s overtime rule, including from workers who told us: “I would love the opportunity to...be compensated for time worked beyond 40 hours, or alternately be given a raise,” and “I make around $40,000 a year and most week[s] work well over 40 hours (likely in the 45-50 range). This rule change would benefit me greatly and ensure that my time is paid for!” and “Please, I would love to be paid for the extra hours I work!”

The department’s final rule, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will increase the standard salary level that helps define and delimit which salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay protections under the FLSA. 

Starting July 1, most salaried workers who earn less than $844 per week will become eligible for overtime pay under the final rule. And on Jan. 1, 2025, most salaried workers who make less than $1,128 per week will become eligible for overtime pay. As these changes occur, job duties will continue to determine overtime exemption status for most salaried employees.

The rule will also increase the total annual compensation requirement for highly compensated employees (who are not entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA if certain requirements are met) from $107,432 per year to $132,964 per year on July 1, 2024, and then set it equal to $151,164 per year on Jan. 1, 2025.

Starting July 1, 2027, these earnings thresholds will be updated every three years so they keep pace with changes in worker salaries, ensuring that employers can adapt more easily because they’ll know when salary updates will happen and how they’ll be calculated.

The final rule will restore and extend the right to overtime pay to many salaried workers, including workers who historically were entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA because of their lower pay or the type of work they performed. 

We urge workers and employers to visit  our website to learn more about the final rule.

Jessica Looman is the administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Follow the Wage and Hour Division on Twitter at  @WHD_DOL  and  LinkedIn .  Editor's note: This blog was edited to correct a typo (changing "administrator" to "administrative.")

• Wage and Hour Division (WHD)
• Fair Labor Standards Act
• overtime rule

SHARE THIS:   

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Supreme Court seems skeptical of Trump’s claim of absolute immunity but decision’s timing is unclear

The Supreme Court appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but it seemed possible Trump could still benefit from a lengthy trial delay, possibly beyond November’s election.

Supreme Court hears arguments over whether Trump is immune from prosecution

Protesters gathered outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington Thursday as the court hears arguments over whether Donald Trump should be immune from prosecution for actions he took during his time as president.

Special counsel team attorney Michael Dreeben has gotten to the heart of the government’s case during Supreme Court arguments over immunity for Donald Trump. Dreeben said absolute immunity for a former president “has no foundation in the Constitution.”

Supreme Court is seen as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

• Copy Link copied

This artist sketch depicts, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during arguments over whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

The artist sketch depicts former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Sauer, far right, speaking before the Supreme Court about whether Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Dana Verkouteren via AP))

This artist sketch depicts, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts at the Supreme Court during arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

Activist Stephen Parlato of Boulder, Colo., right, joins other protesters outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Demonstrators protest outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Demonstrates stand outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

A demonstrator walks outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

A demonstrator stands outside the Supreme Court as the justices prepare to hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Activists from opposing political positions demonstrate outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Diana Neary of Minneapolis, joins other protesters demonstrating outside the Supreme Court as the justices hear arguments over whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

This artist sketch depicts, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan at the Supreme Court during arguments over whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Dana Verkouteren via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared likely to reject former President Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution over election interference, but several justices signaled reservations about the charges that could cause a lengthy delay, possibly beyond November’s election.

A majority of the justices did not appear to embrace the claim of absolute immunity that would stop special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump on charges he conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. But in arguments lasting more than 2 1/2 hours in the court’s first consideration of criminal charges against a former president, several conservative justices indicated they could limit when former presidents might be prosecuted, suggesting that the case might have to be sent back to lower courts before any trial could begin.

Justice Samuel Alito said that “whatever we decide is going to apply to all future presidents.”

The timing of the Supreme Court’s decision could be as important as the outcome. Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed. If Trump regains the presidency, he could order the Justice Department to dismiss the case or, as two justices suggested, pardon himself if convicted.

Since conservatives on the court gained a supermajority with the confirmation of three Trump appointees, they have cast aside decades-old precedent on abortion and affirmation action. Now Trump is asking them to rule that one of the fundamental tenets of the American system of government — that no person is above the law -- should be rejected as well, at least as it applies to him.

The active questioning of all nine justices left the strong impression that the court was not headed for the sort of speedy, consensus decision that would allow a trial to begin quickly.

AP AUDIO: Supreme Court seems skeptical of Trump’s claim of absolute immunity, but decision’s timing is unclear.

AP correspondent Jackie Quinn reports the U.S. Supreme Court has finished hearing arguments on whether Donald Trump is immune from prosecution for alleged crimes while still in office.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump’s three high court appointees, and Alito said their concern was not the case against Trump, but rather the effect of their ruling on future presidencies.

Each time Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben sought to focus on Trump’s actions, these justices jumped in. “This case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country,” Kavanaugh said. The court is writing a decision “for the ages,” Gorsuch said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the other Trump appointee, seemed less open to arguments advanced by Trump lawyer D. John Sauer, searching for a way a trial could take place.

Smith’s team is asking for a speedy resolution. The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, about four months before the election. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would preside over the trial, said pre-trial issues could take up to three months.

The court has moved very quickly in prior cases involving presidential power, deciding the Watergate tapes case against President Richard Nixon just 16 days after arguments. Earlier this year, it took the justices less than a month to rule unanimously that states couldn’t kick Trump off the ballot .

Trump, the first former president charged with crimes, had said he wanted to be at the Supreme Court on Thursday. Instead, he was in a courtroom in New York, where he is standing trial on charges that he falsified business records to keep damaging information from voters when he directed hush money payments to a former porn star to keep quiet her claims that they had a sexual encounter.

Sauer argued that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, he said, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

AP AUDIO: No one is above the law. Supreme Court will decide if that includes Trump while he was president.

AP Supreme Court writer Mark Sherman reports the court is going to decide if former President Trump can be tried for his actions following the last presidential election.

Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington, D.C.

Several justices drilled down on trying to come up with a definition of what constituted an official act, and whether charges based on one should be thrown out.

Justice Elena Kagan at one pointed wondered whether a former president could escape prosecution even if he ordered a coup or sold nuclear secrets. Sauer said prosecutions might not be allowed if those were determined to be official acts.

“That sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” Kagan asked.

Chief Justice John Roberts conjured up a president being indicted for receiving a bribe in exchange for an ambassadorial appointment. How could the indictment go forward if prosecutors had to remove the official act, the appointment? “That’s like a one-legged stool, right?” Roberts asked.

The election interference conspiracy case brought by Smith in Washington is just one of four criminal cases confronting Trump. Smith was in the courtroom Thursday, seated at the table for lawyers taking part in the case.

Smith’s team says the men who wrote Constitution never intended for presidents to be above the law and that, in any event, the acts Trump is charged with — including participating in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden — aren’t in any way part of a president’s official duties. Dreeben said that even if some of the acts are considered part of the president’s powers, like talking to Justice Department officials, they still should be kept in the indictment.

Trump’s conversations with then-Vice President Mike Pence, urging him to reject some electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, might also fall under official acts.

Barrett asked Dreeben whether Smith’s team could “just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.” Dreeben said that might be possible, especially if prosecutors could, for example, use the conversations with Justice Department officials and Pence to make their case.

Nearly four years ago, all nine justices rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from a district attorney’s subpoena for his financial records. That case played out during Trump’s presidency and involved a criminal investigation, but no charges.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who would have prevented the enforcement of the subpoena because of Trump’s responsibilities as president, still rejected Trump’s claim of absolute immunity and pointed to the text of the Constitution and how it was understood by the people who ratified it.

“The text of the Constitution … does not afford the President absolute immunity,” Thomas wrote in 2020.

Commentators had speculated about why the court took up the case in the first place.

Phillip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University’s law school, said he worries about the delay, but sees value in a decision that amounts to “a definitive expression by the Supreme Court that we are a government of laws and not of men.”

The court also may be more concerned with how its decision could affect future presidencies, Harvard law school professor Jack Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog.

But Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said the court never should have taken the case because an ideologically diverse panel of the federal appeals court in Washington adequately addressed the issues.

“If it was going to take the case, it should have proceeded faster, because now, it will most likely prevent the trial from being completed before the election,” Roosevelt said. “Even Richard Nixon said that the American people deserve to know whether their president is a crook. The Supreme Court seems to disagree.”

The court has several options for deciding the case, though something between a complete win for Trump or prosecutors seemed most likely.

The court might spell out when former presidents are shielded from prosecution. It could then either declare that Trump’s alleged conduct easily crossed the line or return the case to Chutkan so she can decide whether Trump should have to stand trial.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court .

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts .

PFAS Enforcement Discretion and Settlement Policy Under CERCLA

Memorandum provides direction about how the EPA will exercise its enforcement discretion under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in matters involving per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The memorandum describes how EPA will focus on holding responsible entities who significantly contributed to the release of PFAS contamination into the environment, including parties that have manufactured PFAS or used PFAS in the manufacturing process, federal facilities, and other industrial parties.

The policy also reflects that EPA does not intend to pursue entities where equitable factors do not support seeking response actions or costs under CERCLA, including farmers, municipal landfills, water utilities, municipal airports, and local fire departments. Issued: April 19, 2024

PFAS Enforcement Discretion Settlement Policy Under CERCLA (pdf) (372.5 KB, 4/19/2024)

On April 19, 2024, the EPA announced that it was designating two types of PFAS, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), as CERCLA hazardous substances. Information regarding the rulemaking is available from the Agency's  Designation of Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) and Perfluorooctanesulfonic Acid (PFOS) as CERCLA Hazardous Substances web page. 

• Enforcement Home
• Enforcement Basics
• Enforcement and Compliance Annual Results for FY 2023
• Air Enforcement
• Water Enforcement
• Waste, Chemical and Cleanup Enforcement
• Criminal Enforcement
• Enforcement at Federal Facilities
• Data and Results
• Policy, Guidance and Publications