Techniques for Oral Presentation In your university w

Techniques for Oral Presentation
   In your university work, you will be expected to give oral presentations, in the form of reports or simply in the form of answers to questions. There are several things you can do to make your oral presentations clear and easy to understand.
   The essential point to realize is that speech and writing are different. If you want to be clearly understood, you can’t simply read your written report aloud. The biggest difference between spoken and written language is that readers can look back over the printed words when they don’t understand. In spoken language, however, listeners can’t go back and check the words. They can rely only on memory. So the first principle to keep in mind when you’ re planning to speak in public is that you have to help the listener’s memory. This means that an oral report can’t deliver information as rapidly as a written report. That is, you can’t have as many pieces of new information packed into the same number of words, because they will come at too fast a rate for the listener to understand.
   In an oral report, the rate of delivery has to be slower. One of the best ways to he]p your audience is simply to speak slowly. Many people speak too fast when they speak to a group. This is a mistake, especially if you have a foreign accent, because it makes listening more difficult. Beyond the simple technique of speaking more slowly when you speak before a group, there are ways of organizing your presentation that can help the listener recognize and understand your main points.
   The organization of your talk should allow enough time for the listener to think both before and after each new idea. The purpose of the time before the new information is to give the audience a chance to understand the background clearly.  Knowledge of the background, or setting of the information, makes it much easier to anticipate what kind of information is coming next.  If the new information occurs too early, without enough background, the listener isn’t prepared to understand the new idea. So before each piece of information, the listeners should be prepared with enough background to be able to predict what’s coming.
    I’ve been describing the time for thinking before the new information.  It’s also important to provide time for thinking after the new information. This thinking time allows listeners to fit the idea into their general knowledge of the subject. Thinking time gives the listener a chance to make sure the idea was understood before going on to the next new idea.
   There are three common ways to give the listener time for thinking after a point of new information. One way is simply to pause. A moment of silence gives the listener time to take in the new information, but there are other ways.  A second method is to use a paraphrase. That is, you say the same thing, but in different words. This paraphrase, or repetition of the idea, helps the listeners to fix the thought in their memory. A third way to give the listener time to think is to use words that don’t mean much. These are words that convey no information but just fill time. For instance, you might say something like "as I’ve been saying" or "and so forth and so on." That kind of expression doesn’t really say anything. It’s just made of what we call "filler words." The words have no real meaning, but they do perform a useful function, since they allow the listener time to think.
   In summary, then, we know that oral language should deliver information at a slower rate than you can use in written language.  New information should be presented more gradually. Thinking time should be provided both before and after each important new item. The time before is to provide a background so that the listeners can have a chance to anticipate the idea. The time after is to allow the listeners a chance to understand what they just heard. The three most common ways to allow this thinking time are: to pause, to paraphrase, and to use filler words.
   I hope that these suggestions will help make your oral presentations a great success.