How to Prepare for a Talk/Presentation!

Hi guys! Today I will be showing you my tips on how to prepare for a Talk/Presentation. I submitted this as a WikiHow post and it took me such a long time to write so I decided to make the most of it and post it here too! I hope you like it! If you want to see more in-depth tutorials on here, let me know in the comments (perhaps next time I could tell you something about fashion design). This post should be helpful if you are preparing for a test at school or if you need to do a talk at work! Here we go!

 1. If you get the choice of what subject your talk is about then choose something you are passionate about because you need to know lots of information about it for your presentation to be detailed and clear. A good topic for a talk is one of your hobbies that you take part in often and have done for a few years. However, if you don't have the choice of what topic to talk about make sure that you do plenty of research. It may seem like a dull topic to you but you need to find what interesting facts there are about it so that you don't seem bored when presenting the talk.

2. Write down notes about what you're going to say in each part of your talk. To start out, you need a simple structure. An effective structure can consist of an introduction and 4 other sections. If you are doing a talk about one of your hobbies, a good section 4 is how to start this hobby for a beginner (e.g Fashion Designing Tips for Beginners) which is a great sum up of the information you have talked about previously which is adapted to be easy for beginners.

3. Now you need to prepare a visual aid. Contrary to popular belief, powerpoints can be a brilliant visual aid for behind you as you talk. Many people argue that having a powerpoint behind you as you talk can ruin the whole presentation because you are constantly looking at the screen, rather than your audience. Additionally, it is often said that that presenters end up reading off of the screen (as well as their audience) and it isn't so much of a visual aid but more of a  bunch of text on the screen. Part of doing a good presentation is communicating with your audience so this is why lots of people swear against powerpoints. Nevertheless, powerpoints have the ability to be great! You just need to remember the word 'visual'. A powerpoint is just a visual aid so shouldn't have tons of text on it, it can have images, video and effects to aid what you're saying. Visual aids help the audience process what you are saying and remind them of the point you are making therefore visual aids are a must and powerpoints can be effective! Make sure you still use eye contact when you are presenting rather than looking at the screen constantly to look like you are actually talking to your audience instead of just reeling off words.

4. As well as eye contact, there are many other things you need to consider while you are carrying out your presentation besides the words you are saying and the visual aids you are showing. You want people to find your talk interesting and it's not just about what you are saying! Many people tend to pick up a monotone while they have been talking for a long duration of time (such as when they carry out a talk) which can be extremely tiring for the audience to listen to and although they may appear to be listening, several have probably switched off. To avoid this, you need to change the pitch of your voice as you speak to show expression. You can emphasize important or surprising facts and figures to regain people's attention. To illustrate your point, it can help if you do hand movements. When you are describing an image on the screen you can point towards it etc. To look friendly, approachable and interested, make sure you're stood upright with your back straight as a pose to being slumped and shy, your posture is important too.

5. When you think you are ready to come up with what you want to say you can make cue cards. Cue cards are brilliant because they only have a few key notes on them to prompt you. You should keep eye contact with your audience at most times so reading a lot of text at a time means that you  are constantly looking down, cue cards are a great solution for that problem! You should number your cue cards so that you know what order to read them in. Perhaps a queue card for each section (including the introduction) would work best?

6. Choose a video that fits the theme of your presentation. The video should be about 2-3 minutes long because if it is too long then it can become quite tedious but on the other hand, if it too short then there isn't a long enough break between you talking. A short video can be the time where you prepare yourself for the rest of your talk and it can act as a break for the audience where they can don't have to concentrate on what you're saying so much (often class talks are not only speaking tests for the presenters, but also listening tests for the audience). The video has to be relevant to your topic (obviously) but it can explain something that you have been struggling to put into words (if you would like). If you want it to be easy to listen to, it should have background music, quick bullet points explained briefly and images on the screen. The good thing about including a video is that you can have a break from creating content. If you are doing a presentation at school you need to be sure that the video can actually be played when you arrive.

With these tips, your talk will be a hit!