1.

Facial expression
Facial expression can be defined as the movements of a person’s eyes, mouth, and facial muscles to
express feelings and build a connection with the listener.

- An example of a bad facial expression:

*show a picture of a blank facial expression*

Giving a presentation with a blank face, without any particular facial expression is like speaking in a
monotone – no matter how great your content is, your audience will not be engaged and your
presentation will be considered as a lack of passion.

- An example of a good facial expression:

*Then show a picture of a appropriate faical expression*

First, open your eyes wider, raise your eyebrows a little, and smile warmly. Those things can make a
huge difference in setting the tone for your presentation. You can also “reset” at different points during
your presentation to make sure that you haven’t fallen back into a dull resting expression and to re-
engage your audience’s attention. More important, your facial expression must match your content. Be
attentive to what you’re saying. If your facial expressions are in line with the tone of your words, then
the information you are presenting will come across more clearly.

2. Eye contact
Having thought about what your face is doing in general, it’s time to get even more specific and think
about eye contact. Eye contact is really crucial when it comes to communication. According to
Wikipedia, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and is thought to have a large influence
on social behavior.

- An example of a bad eye contact:

*show a video*

As you can see, the man in the video just look on the paper. His eyes are downcast and he nearly has no
eye contact with the audience. Failure to maintain good eye contact with your conversation partner can
limit your ability to get ideas out. And the audience would feel that “he is not talking to me, he is talking
to someone else”.

- An example of a good eye contact:

The first thing to remember is your eyes should be wide open like I said in the previous part. Second,
don’t stare at one spot. No one wants to feel uncomfortable or that they are being put on the spot.
Finally, make sure that by the end of your presentation you have made eye contact with everyone at
least once – that might mean every individual if you have a small audience, or every section of a crowd if
you have a bigger audience.

3. Posture and gesture

We’ve talked about facial expressions and eye contact, now it’s time to look at the bigger picture:
posture.

Stand straight with shoulders back. The feet should point straight ahead, not quite shoulder-width
apart.