Business presentations

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The art of presentations, an easy concept to grasp or a complex one? Welcome to this weeks edition of Talk, thank you for joining me. In this weeks blog cast we are going to take a look at intonation and how it can be more important than grammar.

"Voice tones play a part"

Let's start with the obvious, relating to an audience is all about sounding interesting, keen, enthusiastic and demonstrating a genuine want and need to transfer knowledge. Some languages are very direct and don't always reflect these qualities. It's ok nothing is better just different and that's exactly what I would like to talk about today.

"English For Work"

As we have already taken a look at the introduction in last weeks edition, today we will start by looking at objectives:

* I would like to talk to you about...
* I'm going to demonstrate.....
* I would like to take a look at......

Your greeting had empathetic voice value when you started your presentation so stating a topic will too. You can't tell the difference between styles unless your shown so these are:

* Robotic
* Aggressive
* Empathetic

The first has no variation in sound, in fact there is no way to identify how someone feels about a topic.

Being aggressive is quite common since lots of managers feel that if they don't use an authoritarian voice this may 

somehow lose respect or control. These voice tones are likened to a parent and a child scenario and are often far from effective. The last is a voice tone that indicates when you are happy, sad, keen or angry to name a few. Modern businesses likes this voice tone since it demonstrates emotional value. This emotional value helps to relate to an audience in every scenario and will be a useful tool in mastering the art of presentations. So let's take a look at how your voice tone affects a presentation:

* Attention please, I am about to start. This is more of an order than and this will have a negative effect. Using good morning, good afternoon or good evening will carry more empathetic value.

* I will take your questions at the end of my presentation. This could be robotic and indicate that you really just want to finish. It could also show your audience that there is no emotional connection to your audience. I would be only too pleased to answer all of your questions at the very end of the presentation.

This has definitely got great empathetic voice value and shows that you care about what feedback you get. If your interested to learn more on this topic, try our English For Work course. Join us next week for more on Business English, for now goodbye.