Sharpening Your Presentation Skills
- Don't read from the slides. It's more interesting if you know your presentation without cues. Reading tells your students you don't really understand your material, a huge blow to your credibility.
Use stories to help illustrate the topic.
- Tell stories. You probably have some good stories to tell. You can also ask the class if they have stories that illustrate or give a real-life application of the topic. We believe that storytelling is the most effective technique to engage and make training more interesting.
- Project your voice. You need to be heard. Projecting your voice doesn't require yelling, let your voice resonate in your lungs rather than in the throat to produce a clearer sound. Speak to the person in the back of the room.
- Use natural gestures. Don't try to plan your gestures because more often than not, it looks planned, and can actually be quite amusing to students. Because planned gestures don't match your other involuntary body cues, they look false. Don't continually keep your arms folded or down at your side.
- Buy some time. If you don't know the answer, ask if anyone in the class knows. You'll be surprised how much experience and knowledge your audience has. If someone knows the answer be gracious and thank them. - You can use statements like, "that's a really good question," or "I'm glad you asked me that," to buy yourself a few moments to organize your response. Will the other people in the audience know you are using these filler sentences to reorder your thoughts? Probably not. And even if they do, it still makes the presentation more smooth than um's and ah's littering your answer.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
3-4. Which of the following techniques is considered best in getting student involvement and making training interesting?
You forgot to answer the question!