A good way to make your presentations effective, interesting and easy to follow is to use signposting language. 'Signposting language' is the words and phrases that people use to tell the listener what has just happened, and what is going to happen next.
In other words, signposting language guides the listener through the presentation. A good presenter will usually use a lot of signposting language, so it is a good idea to learn a few of the common phrases, even if you spend more time listening to presentations than giving them! Signposting language is usually fairly informal, so it is quite easy to understand.
Here's some useful language:
Introducing the Subject
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I'd like to start by... Let's begin by... First of all, I'll... Starting with... I'll begin by... |
Finishing One Subject
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Well, I've told you about... That's all I have to say about... We've looked at... So much for... |
Starting Another Subject
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Now we'll move on to... Let me turn now to... Next... Turning to... I'd like now to discuss... Let's look now at... |
Analysing a Point and Giving Recommendations
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Where does that lead us? Let's consider this in more detail... What does this mean for ABC? Translated into real terms... |
Giving an Example
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For example,... A good example of this is... As an illustration,... To give you an example,... To illustrate this point... |
Dealing with Questions
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We'll be examining this point in more detail later... I'd like to deal with this question later, if I may... I'll come back to this question later in my talk... Perhaps you'd like to raise this point at the end... I won't comment on this now... |
Summarising and Concluding
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In conclusion,... Right, let's sum up, shall we? I'd like now to recap... Let's summarise briefly what we've looked at... Finally, let me remind you of some of the issues we've covered... If I can just sum up the main points... |
Ordering / Sequencing
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Firstly...secondly...thirdly...lastly... First of all...then...next...after that...finally... To start with...later...to finish up... |