Aidi Tang Assistant Professor

School of International Trade and Economics, CUFE

Last Updated：September 15, 2023

 The importance of planning a presentation

 Misunderstandings on planning a presentation

 The flow chart of planning process

Two Reasons:
1 . helps you understand what your objectives are and how you
are going to achieve them

2 . provides you with the knowledge that you have done every-
thing you can to ensure a successful presentation and helps
boost your confidence
Misunderstandings:

1. time-consuming, kick off on the content

audience feel confused as to what they are going to listen to

2. go to extremes: run around the office, gather details and files,

cram too much information

audience feel exhausted and bored

3. sit down and write out every word

Flow Chart:

Determining the
Setting your Preparing visual structure and
objectives aids preparing the
scripts

Researching your Rehearsing the Delivering the

audience presentation presentation

Choosing a topic
and outlining your Preparing the
presentation topic presentation area
structure
Functions of objectives:
1. keep you focused on the topic
2. drive your presentation and move the audience to
your end goals
3. lay the foundation on which your content, organization
and visual aids are built
Questions to be asked before setting the objectives:

1. Why am I making this presentation?

2. Do I need to inform, to persuade, to train or to sell?

3. What do I want my audience to have understood?

4. What action do I want my audience to take following my presentation?

How do I plan for a presentation?
Common Objectives of Presentations:
1. to inform or describe
2. to entertain or amuse
3. to persuade or inspire
4. to instruct or explain
1. Inform:
• providing the audience with the basic information of the presentation
 Describe:
• depicting what somebody or something is like or stating the features or
characteristics of the things under discussion
Tips:
• consider the audience’s current level of knowledge
• use anecdotes, examples and illustrations
• plan the presentation in deductive, chronological or
spatial order
• carefully choose your words
2. Entertain or Amuse :
Tips:
• relate your speech to the audience’s interests and to the occasion
• be brief and use appropriate humor to liven the mood
3. Persuade or Inspire:
• convincing the audience and winning their approval, modifying their
viewpoints, beliefs or attitudes

Tips:
• find out what the audience's needs and interests are
• show how you can satisfy those needs
• ask for an appropriate reaction or approval
dos and don’ts:
• quote relevant materials and evidence to back up your arguments
and appeal to the audience’s hearts and head

• avoid “emotive” and “colored” language

• don’t generalize or exaggerate

• don’t forget to give reference to the other side of the story

4. instruct or explain:
• help the audience understand how things work, how processes or
procedures are carried out, how actions are performed, why things
are the way they are or why certain steps are taken in a process
4. instruct or explain:

Tips:
• use diagrams, pictures or demonstrations to steer the audience
towards your end goals
• choose words carefully
• use analogy to describe something familiar to the audience
Some presentations have single objective
while others have multiple objectives.
Identify objectives of the following presentations:
1. a sales presentation at a conference
→ inform or convince the participants of your product or service
2. a training session at your workplace on a new computer system
→ pass on information about the system
an element of instruction or explanation
convince your staff that the new computer system is beneficial
3. a formal presentation about your specialist project
→ inform the audience about your project
explanation or instruction could also come into the presentation
4. a presentation in an interview for a new job
→ have some features of a presentation at a sales conference
inform the interviewers about yourself, inspire them to employ you
5. a presentation to summarize an activity at a tutorial
or a regular class
→ describe the detailed projects you’ ve worked on
inform the audience of your work
A process of learning:
• who your audiences are
• what they think
• how they feel
• what they want
• how you can best reach them
• select appropriate points of emphasis in the presentation
• develop a useful level of detail
• choose and prepare appropriate visual aids
• create a tone that is sensitive to your audience's circumstance
• psychological analysis (心理分析)
• objective needs
• subjective needs
• demographic analysis (人物分析)
• situational analysis (场景分析)
A. objective needs:
• different kinds of factual information about the audience such
as nationality, education, culture, profession, age, sex,
hobbies, interests, family, etc.

B. subjective needs:
• cognitive and affective needs such as their personalities,
confidence, attitudes, hopes, expectations and so on
• Who am I making the presentation to?
• Why do they attend my presentation?
• What do my audiences already know about this topic?
• What do my audiences expect from me?
• What kind of information should I share with my audiences?
• What form of speech will suit this topic best to my audiences?
• What feedback do I expect from my audiences?
 :
• differences in the following aspects: race or ethnicity, religion,
group affiliation, language, belief, morals, etc.

:
• include such things as the size of audience, the time when you
make the presentation, the place where you make the
presentation and physical setting.
How to choose a topic?
The criteria for a suitable topic:
 be worthwhile
• address issues with significant implications for the audience
• be important enough to merit audience’s time and attention

 be appropriate
• select a topic about which you know a lot and would like to learn more

 be limited in scope
• narrow and limit your topic and divide your topic into several
significant parts
tips:
 brainstorm possible topic ideas
• Write down every topic that comes to mind on the basis of your
personal knowledge and experiences to generate a variety of ideas
without evaluation.

 list key words to refine your topic

• Put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
• Be selective.
• Think about the significant terms, concepts that you would like to
cover in the presentation.
tips:
 arrange your ideas in appropriate order
• end a presentation with the most important idea
• arrange your ideas from the biggest one to the narrowest, or from the first
to the most recent one

 craft a good title

• highlight the key issue to be discussed in the presentation in several word
• write a title consisting of two parts with the first part indicating the theme of
the presentation and the second part offering explanations to the theme
Make a presentation on movies.
 step 1: brainstorm various kind of movies you can discuss and
draw a mind map

 step 2 : think about what specific type of movie you want to

discuss, and what specific movie you want to explore

 step 3 : decide on the elements or parts of the movie you’ll

cover in detail

 step 4: arrange the order of those elements

 step 5: come up with a catchy title

for example:

Movie choice: Avatar

Key words: social background, plot, 3D technology, characters,
virtual animation
Order: plot (情节)→ characters (人物)→ virtual animation (虚拟动画)
Title: Movie storm: 3D virtual animation technique in Avatar
the place where your presentation will be made

 impact how you communicate with the audience

 impact how they keep up with you
 impact to what degree they are engaged, motivated and focused
 know in advance if there will be any difficulties with physical setting
 ask questions of the person who arranged the presentation
 look over the venue a few days in advance
 arrive early on the day of your speech to inspect the room
Issues to consider when booking presentation venue:
 transportation
 size
 number of chairs
 seating arrangement
 audio/visual equipment
 distracters
if you have little control over venue contraints
 Don’t be influenced by these aspects of this discomfort
 try even harder to adapt to the circumstances passionately
and confidently.
 audience-centered manner
 enhance efficiency
 improve mutual trust
1. traditional rows
 consist of rows of fixed seating
 audiences face the speaker with their
backs to one another encourage
individual work and productivity
 minimize disruptions
 enable the speaker to supervise the
presentation easily
 suitable for audiences of a big size
 uneven distribution of interaction
among the listeners
2. horseshoe
 audiences face each other while the
speaker can move about the room
 encourage discussion and participation
 foster connection between the speaker
and listeners
 offer large area for demonstrations and
presentations
 good for small- and medium-sized
audiences
 overwhelms shy audiences
 increase difficulty in keeping the whole
presentation under control
3. clusters

 discussion in groups of three or more

 offer safe and comfortable environment
 interact closely with each other
 collaboration and problem solving skills
are greatly developed
 lend itself to off-task behavior
 increase noise level and distractions
4. stadium

 desks are grouped in clusters but all

facing the same direction
 the best choice for the audience of a
large lecture and a formal presentation
with limited interactions between the
audience members
 the size of the audience
 your expectations on the audience
D E
• shape A or E:
a formal meeting in which the participants have to see each other to
communicate

• shape B or C:
for the audience of a large lecture and a formal presentation with
limited internal interactions between the audience members

• shape D:
for discussion in groups of four or a larger group size