If you have to make an oral presentation, you may feel nervous in your stomach and when the moment of truth arrives, you go blank or that nervous state plays tricks on you. Actually no longer an intimidating challenge that makes you anxious, even days before it's time to do it. That is why knowing how to give an oral presentation will give you the calm you need to do well.
But if you learn how to do it and have a series of steps in mind, this will give you security and confidence, which will help you dissipate those nerves and give you an excellent oral presentation. So let's see how to give an oral presentation.
Give an oral presentation the right way
The first thing you should keep in mind is that you have to improve your ability to express yourself and it is not something that you can do quickly. You have to practice it daily and in a few weeks you can have it totally mastered. You must commit to obtaining good results and to achieve this it is essential to practice.
We are going to give you some key tips that will allow you to prepare a sublime oral presentation. Do not lose detail of each of the points that we are going to give you below.
Prepare it in time
It is important that if you have to give an oral presentation from half an hour to an hour, you prepare it at least a week in advance, so you can dedicate an hour a day to preparing it with confidence. And if it is more time, better. What matters is that you distribute the days for the preparation so that you can deal with possible unforeseen events in the most natural way possible.
Preparing the presentation a few days in advance will allow you to have more calm and security in your person and that anxiety that you usually have will disappear. As you will have everything well prepared you will be able to handle stress much better y you will transform it into motivation and effort to do your best.
Of course, in this preparation you can not miss good documentation to have a very clear script about everything you want to talk about. You can prepare on a piece of paper some key words that are important for the presentation so that it is easier for you to reach them and that you do not forget anything.
Be clear about the main idea
When you prepare an oral presentation, it is important that you have a very clear idea of the main idea that you want to convey to the audience. Divide the information without leaving aside that main topic that you want to deal with.
During the first 5 minutes you should make a summary of everything you are going to talk about and use it as the main outline of your talk. Your audience will know what to hear and you will be able to contextualize everything you are going to say correctly and without giving rise to confusion.
That is, within your introduction you must make clear the most important points, making it clear what the essential points to follow are. Avoid overly technical words that, although they may be easy for you to understand, may not be so for your listeners.
Keep a structure in your presentation
It is essential that throughout your oral presentation there is a good structure and if you make references to subtopics or aspects that come out of the central theme, make it clear and then know how to redirect the words to the axis of the talk. Speak clearly and neatly and with an attitude close to the public that is listening to you.
Although it is necessary that you do not forget that the subtopics that you deal with must be connected in some way to your main axis of the talk. Phrases like “as I mentioned before”, “as we have seen”, “we will see this next”, are a great way to keep the thread of your entire speech. In any case, yesIt should always be a coherent speech.
Get to the point
It is better to say what is fair and to say it well by giving complete information than to have gaps or “filler” parts that do not really contribute anything. In this way, if it is necessary to modify the script before the presentation you will have to do it.
To do this, review your entire presentation well and practice it before doing it to realize if there are parts that it is better to do without so that it does not become heavy or so that your audience loses the thread.
One way to practice speaking is to read aloud in front of a mirror, so you'll notice if you're making body movements that you need to modify or if you're using filler words in your speech that you must eliminate in order to have a conversation with confidence without verbal distractions.
The goal to get to the point is that your mind gets used to the order of the talk and to present the necessary content in the correct way. Also, while you listen to yourself speaking (you can record yourself if you want) you will be able to better remember all the points to be developed in the talk.
Don't get overwhelmed the day before
If you have prepared and rehearsed it well, you do not have to be overwhelmed the day before. Not much less. You will feel that confidence that you need so much and you will only have to review the key points and nothing else. Dedicate the day to rest and relax a little so that your mind and body recover and you are fully prepared for the oral presentation that you will make.
Follow a few steps and keep your audience in mind
By the time the day of the talk arrives, you should remember everything, but you can have a general script of your presentation so that it is easier for you to return to the thread of the speech in case you have to stop or have been distracted for any reason. .
Furthermore, the public is also important and you should know how to look at them and how to maintain good body tone. So that all those eyes looking at you and all those ears listening to every word you say don't make you nervous, you can imagine that you are in a game or that everyone present is a doll incapable of harming you.
Another thing you can keep in mind is that all the people who are there want to listen to you, so it is something that will give you confidence. They have come for you, and that should not increase your anxiety, but increase your satisfaction that you are important at that moment.
With all these tips you will realize that the nerves will no longer be so intense before an oral presentation and that you will be able to do it wonderfully.