Section 2.10.2

Outlining and Planning an Oral Presentation

Learn the basic outline for any oral presentation. Most consist of four parts:

1. Introduction
2. Body
3. Closing
4. Question-and-answer period

Introduction

The introduction to an oral presentation usually includes these components:

To lend structure to your oral presentation, repeat key phrases from your introductory overheads throughout your presentation.

For further discussion and examples of overheads, see Examples of Materials for an Oral Presentation: A Design Review.

Body

The body of an oral presentation includes these elements:

Closing

The closing of an oral presentation includes these elements:

Question-and-Answer Period

In the question-and-answer period, you do the following things:

• Interact with the audience by responding to their queries. Use the question-and-answer period as a means of collaborating with your audience: learn what you failed to communicate effectively; incorporate suggestions from the audience into the next stage of your work, where appropriate.
• Gauge the effectiveness of your presentation from the kinds of questions you are asked. If the questions seem trivial or repetitious, then you probably did not communicate well to that audience.
• Go into more detail about some points you covered.
• Present new material in response to a question (when this material is used to support major points in your presentation).

You should try to anticipate what kinds of questions you may be asked and prepare viewgraphs for this possibility.

## Outlining an Oral Presentation ##


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