Part 4 - Presentations

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BBC Learning English
Talk about English
Business Language To Go
Part 4 - Presentations

This programme was first broadcast in 2001
This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript of the programme

Carmela: We’re looking at the language of presentations.
As usual I’m joined by business English expert David Evans. David,
presentations …. They can be scary, even if you’re just doing them in front of
colleagues. Can you reassure our listeners that they don’t have to be a huge
ordeal.
David: Yes, I mean of course it’s true that presentations can be challenging but the
important thing is just to prepare properly. Make sure you know who your
audience is, what they expect from you - and of course most importantly, what
the aim of your presentation is.
Carmela: And if you like to prepare properly for today’s programme - than grab a pen and
paper now - so that you can write down today’s phrases.
Okay, let’s move on to our first example of a presentation.
We start at Kelly Services, which is an international recruitment company.


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Claire Francis, Head of Communications is doing a presentation for her
colleagues.
CLIP
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming along here today. I hope my
presentation isn’t going to take too long and that you will find it interesting. The purpose of
today’s presentation is to discuss how we can improve internal communications within
our company.
Now let me begin by explaining that I’d like to talk about the business case for better
communication, secondly I want to cover different styles and methods and finally I would like
to finish off by talking about some of the basics we need to have in place to deliver good
quality, consistent communications across the company. I’d be very happy to invite you to
ask questions at the end of the session and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time for us to
discuss some of the points that have been raised.
END OF CLIP

Carmela: Now have a listen to the beginning of another presentation. You’ll notice that it
follows a similar pattern to the last example. Listen out for how Tim starts his
talk.

CLIP
“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, Thank you for finding the time to come and join
me for this presentation this afternoon. My name is Tim Mason, I‘m a retail consultant and
many of you will have seen me shadowing you in your jobs and looking through the accounts
and so on in the company over the last week. I’ve invited you here today to have a look at
my findings. First, I’d like to have a look at the performance of the company, the sales of the
company over the last three years. Then I’d like to have a look at our market share in the
women’s wear market and look at our competitors and, thirdly I’d like to suggest some
improvements in our range of women’s wear. At the end I’d be happy to answer any of
your questions.

END OF CLIP



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Carmela: David, what were some of the key expressions that we heard in those two
presentations.
David: Well, I think it was very interesting that both of those presentations followed
the standard pattern for an introduction. We heard in both cases the standard
welcome “ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming”. Than they moved on
and they stated the purpose or the aim of the presentation - again with a very
simple phrase
“The purpose of this presentation - is to talk to you about …this subject”.
Then they move on to a summary of the main points of the presentation. Now,
normally the summary would focus on three main points and you’d hear
expressions like - “I’d like to talk about …”I want to have a look at…” I’d
like to finish by saying…” - those kinds of phrases
Carmela: And then both speakers invite questions from the audience - could you pick out
the phrases that they use to do that.
David: They use a phrase like “at the end, you can ask questions”. And the reason
they do this is because they don’t want the audience interrupting them
continually with questions during the presentation - but they want to show that
they are open to questions and that they welcome discussion as part of the
session .
Carmela: Now let’s talk about the body of the presentation. This is the main part of the


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presentation and people often use visual aids to illustrate their points here.
Listen out now for the language used to introduce visual aids.

CLIP
“If you have a look at this first graph you can see that our sales topped 50 million the year
before last. Then last year sales dropped to 40 million with a slight recovery at the end of the
financial year. However this year sales have continued to drop to an all time low of 30 million.
(Paper) Now let’s look at our market share. As you can see we have 25% of the market
share, 10% down on last year.”

END OF CLIP


CLIP
A good example of how important internal communications are, is shown by some findings
from research that we have recently undertaken. Good communications is a very key factor in
staff motivation. If you look at this slide, you will see how important it is to get the basics in
place. You need to identify your communication requirement, agree your objectives and
success criteria, identify your target audiences, define the content of your message. and
determine the style of delivery. A good illustration of the communication process is when all
those basics fall into place naturally.
END OF CLIP

Carmela: Lots of language there for drawing attention to graphs, statistics and other
additional information. David, could you pick out some of the key expressions
that were used there?
David: Yes, I mean, again it’s interesting that both presenters make it very, very clear
to their audience what exactly they are looking at. If you look at this first
graph, we heard, If you look at this slide, we also heard, and obviously they


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are introducing this kind of information to provide examples. And we could
hear them signposting these with expressions like
A good example of this is
or
A good illustration of this is
And again we heard some signposting language to make it clear when the
speaker was moving from one point to the next. Now let’s look at … -was
the expression that we heard to do that.
Carmela: Now let’s look at how a presentation might typically end. We’re going back to
Tim.

CLIP

Tim: Ladies and gentlemen if you have any questions I would be happy to answer
them now.

Carrie: yeah, can I just ask .um . graph number 3 that last one you showed us can you
explain to me where you’re intending to find the extra income to increase the design
arrangement in the maternity ware?

Tim: Yes, a very good question I’ve looked at the office ware range and it is quite heavy on
material, holiday ware tends to be much lighter much smaller amounts of material
involved and I think that s an area… FADE OUT ……where will certainly find a large
saving.

END OF CLIP



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Carmela: Now, having told them at the beginning that they’d be able to ask questions,
Tim then points out that this is a time that they can do just that. He invites
some questions from his audience. How, how did he signal that it’s question
time?
David: Yes, he said:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions I‘d be happy to answer
them now.

That’s quite a long way of saying - I mean a more
simple way - would have been to say …
Does anyone have any questions
It’s also interesting that he handles the questions very well, making the person
feel valued, feel wanted. A way of doing this is simply to say “ that’s a good
question”.
Carmela: Thanks David. David Evans will be joining me next time for more Business
Language To Go.