How to give a presentation in English
Presentations have become an integral part of modern academic education and business, and English is their international language of communication. Speaking to an audience is not easy in your native language, let alone speaking in English. It is likely that one day you will have to give your presentation in English. To make it easier for you, we share a selection of phrases in English that will help you at every stage of your presentation.
Greetings and acquaintances
At the very beginning of the presentation, of course, you need to greet the audience and introduce yourself. Greetings in English can be formal or informal, depending on who you are speaking to.
Official greetings
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Richard Hawkins.
Let me introduce to you my colleague, Dr. James Stevens.
On behalf of ABC, I would like to welcome you here today.
First of all, I would like to thank the organizers of this conference for inviting me here today.
Let me thank you all for coming here today.
Informal greetings
Hello, I'm Kate Watson.
This is my boss, Mr. Rigsby.
Hello everyone. Thanks for coming.
For those of you who don’t know me yet, my name is Susan Davis.
Job responsibilities
Perhaps, not all of those present at the presentation know you, and they naturally have questions "What company do you work for?" ("What company do you work for?") Or "What do you do in your job?" ("What is your job?"). If it is an academic setting, then you may be asked "What college / university do you teach at?" (“What college / university do you teach?”). You can use these phrases to describe your place of work or company and job responsibilities in English:
Let me start by saying a few words about my background.
I work for the ABC Company.
I'm with ABC.
I represent the ABC company.
We are in the IT business.
We sell ...
We produce ...
We manufacture ...
Our company’s major products are ...
I am in charge of ...
I am responsible for ...
In the company, I take care of ...
Description of company projects
To focus on what your company is doing at the moment, Present Continuous is suitable in English:
We are currently working on ...
We are developing ...
We are designing ...
We are building ...
We are marketing ...
Introduction
To make it easier for listeners to comprehend the information, the presentation should have a clear structure. Be sure to indicate the topic of the presentation and its purpose, tell about what awaits the audience and in what order.
Theme and goals
The purpose / aim of my presentation today is to….
In this presentation, I am going to walk you through some of the best marketing strategies.
My topic today is ...
As you all know, today I am going to talk about ...
In my presentation I'll focus on four major issues.
My presentation is divided into three parts.
This presentation is structured as follows ....
Organizational moments
Decide whether you will answer questions during the presentation or after, and alert the audience to your decision. Also, prepare a few typical phrases in English in case you cannot immediately answer the question.
If your presentation includes printouts, make sure everyone has them. Another important point about timing is to let the audience know how long your presentation will take.
It will take about 40 minutes to cover these issues.
For the next 50 minutes, I am going to talk about ...
Since we only have 30 minutes to discuss this vast topic, I’m going to be brief.
Don’t worry about taking notes, I’ve put all the relevant information on a handout for you.
Does everybody have a copy of my report in English?
I can email the PowerPoint presentation to anyone who would like it.
If you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me at any time.
I will be glad to answer any questions that you may have at the end.
There will be time for a Q&A (Questions and Answers) session at the end.
I'm sorry. I can't tell you that right now.
I'll explain a little later.
I’m afraid I can’t answer your question at the moment. I’ll get back to you later.
Can we save that until later?
Main part
So, you told the audience about the topic of the presentation, its goals and parts. Now it is important not to go astray: announce the transition to a new part, draw conclusions, remind of what has already been said.
Link phrases
Let’s make a start.
I'm going to begin by ...
First,… / Second,… / Third,… / Next… / Finally,…
Now let's move on to ...
I'd like now to discuss ...
In addition to this, ...
Let me elaborate further.
This relates to what I said earlier ...
Let me explain.
There's a good reason for this:
The reason is ...
Tables, graphs, illustrations
Presentations often contain graphs, charts, and the like. How to talk about them in English is a separate topic. But you can draw the attention of listeners to them with the following phrases:
Let’s have / take a look at ...
I'd like to draw your attention to ...
I'd like to illustrate this point by showing you ...
As you can see from this infographic ...
From this chart, we can understand how ...
Presentation of a project, research or product
The following phrases will help you tell in English what your company or university is doing:
Let me tell you about ...
This is our newest product.
This is one of our latest designs.
It is made of ...
It can be used for ...
This contains ...
This one features ...
This is equipped with ...
This particular model ...
This is priced at ...
Company perspectives
And these phrases in English will help to raise the topic of your job prospects:
We expect ...
We plan to ...
We project ...
We hope to ...
We should ...
We will be (V + ing) ...
If all goes as planned, our company ...
Our projections are ...
According to our projections ...
Conclusion
At the end of the presentation, we summarize with the help of these phrases in English:
To sum up ... / To summarise ...
To conclude ... / In conclusion ...
I'll briefly summarize the main issues.
That is it. Thank you for listening.
Conclusion
If you have to give a presentation in English, then first of all, don't worry and good luck! And, secondly, our tips are as follows:
Choose a communication tone that you will adhere to;
Write a clear outline for your presentation;
Do not forget about introductory words and phrases;
Use additional materials - tables, illustrations, diagrams, printouts. And, most importantly, translate them into English.
By the way, these phrases can be useful to you, for example, when interviewing in English. More phrases on the platform ...