ORAL PRESENTATION

Part (1) 1

Salaheddin Abu Yahya 11/23/2019

One of the Most Important Aspects to be Successful in
Your Research, Your Job and Your Career is

Excellent Oral and Written

Communication “
Citation comes from Prof. Sherman Frankel and it is full confirmed by
Klara Nahrstedt ☺

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 Objective of Oral Communication
 To Inform
 To Educate
 To Convince
 To Persuade
 To Lead to Action

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Myths and Mistakes of Technical Presentations
1. Content is everything. Style is unimportant and
enthusiasm is offensive

Mehrabian, a communication theorist, showed that

Body language and tone of voice together supply 93% of the

overall message impact

Actual words only supply 7% of the overall impact

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2. The text on the visuals is more important than the
speaker.

Salaheddin Abu Yahya

Remember, the speaker is always the
focal point of presentation, visual
assistance helps
Pace of the presentation
Flow of the information presented

3. Strategic organization is not necessary for technical talks.

❑Technical speaker must not rely on the audience to fill in gaps and
reach appropriate conclusions.
❑Technical speaker must understand different types of presentations,
organization, and strategies for a particular type of speech.
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 Oral Presentation Skills

Planning
Preparation
Practice
Performance
Questions
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 1-Planning Your Presentation
What do you present? Why do you present?

How do you
Present?

How Long do you present? Where do you present?

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 2- Preparation

Outline and sketch slides

 Prepare slides
 Proof read
 Prepare notes -
brief keywords and phrases, except maybe
first couple of paragraphs
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 Preparation Outline
1 - 2 minutes per slide

Generic 15 min Conference Presentation

Title Slide (1) Title, author, affiliation, acknowledgements

Rationale (1-2) Why this is interesting
Methods (1-2) What you did
Results (2-4) What did you find and what does it mean
Summary (1) One thing you want them to remember
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 Preparation - Slides
1. Use Images & Graphics
Relevant images communicate, and maintain interest

2. Minimise text & numbers

3. Light text on dark background

❖ Never use the color red for your main text, title or labels, red color is difficult to
read from distance
❖ Use red as a highlight color, indicating problem area
❖ Use green as a highlight color
❖ Two of the most common and readable colors are blue and black
❖ Blue color (especially light blue) is the most soothing color on an eye.
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 4. Avoid distracting backgrounds

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5. Use large sans serif fonts

Helvetica or Arial rather than serif fonts like Times

24 pt is minimum, 32 pt, or even 36 pt is better

6. Mixture upper and lower case

12
ALL CAPITALS IS HARDER TO READ, ALTHOUGH
IT MIGHT BE OK FOR THE ODD TITLE
Salaheddin Abu Yahya 11/23/2019
6.Use colour to highlight text

Use high contrast colours for important lines,

symbols or text, and lower contrast colours for less
important lines, symbols or text. But use a small
number of colours

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7. Keep figures simple with Thick lines and large symbols
Show means, sd, effect size statistics, but not test statistics
80
*
60
Y axis (units)

40

20

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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 20
r = 0.89
15

Y Axis (units) 10
Participant 2
5

0
20 30 40 50 60 70
X Axis (units)

8. Progressive disclosure
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 3-Practice

Practice, practice, practice

Get feedback, and use it.
Be ruthless - delete unnecessary information

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 4-Performance
o Don’t Apologise
o Speak loudly & clearly
o Use short simple sentences
o Avoid jargon & abbrev.
o Vary pitch, tone, volume, speed and pauses
o Avoid distracting mannerisms ‫تجنب تشتيت السلوكيات‬
o Relax, be enthusiastic
o Make eye contact
o Keep an eye on the time remaining
o Explain figures, and point to important aspects
o Give a clear and concise summary, then stop.
o Don’t go overtime. Ever.
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 5- Questions
❖ Anticipate likely questions and prepare extra slides
with the answers

❖ Maybe even plan a stooge

❖ Paraphrase questions
1. so that other people hear the question
2. to check you understand the questions
3. to stall while you think about an answer
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❖ If you don’t know the answer:
1. say so.
2. Offer to find out.
3. Ask the audience.

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