Effective Communication: Tips for Presentations and Problem-Solving
Tips for Effective Presentations
Positive:
- Ensure a clear beginning, middle, and end.
- Capture the audience’s interest from the start.
- Interact with the audience.
- Provide opportunities for questions.
- Appear confident by smiling and relaxing.
Difficult:
- Maintain eye contact with the audience.
Phrases from the Presentation:
Beginning:
- Today, I’m going to talk to you about…
Middle:
- So, to sum up…
End:
- Thank you for listening.
Describing Problems:
- It keeps/ Something’s wrong with/ There’s a problem with the…
- The... isn’t/ aren’t…
Asking About Problems:
- Have you noticed it before?
- How long has it been like that?
- What do you think caused it?
- What happened?
Discussing Solutions:
- Have you tried…
- Why don’t you try…
- It looks like a problem…
- What we need to do is…
- One solution is to…
Example:
- A) I’m worried about my Jeep. It keeps making…
- B) Have you noticed it before?
- C) What you need to do is take it to a mechanic.
- A) Something’s wrong with the coffee machine.
- B) How long has it been like that?
- C) Why don’t we put a notice on it saying…
- A) I want to buy some plane tickets, but there’s a problem with the website.
- B) Have you tried using a different browser?
- C) Maybe the website isn’t working.
- A) I hear a noise. What do you think?
- B) Oh yeah, I see it. What happened?
- C) Hmmm… Looks like it’s coming from the engine.
Time Clauses
- He was doing research in Oxford when he had the idea for his first book.
- He moved to Spain after he had learned some Spanish.
- When he got to the meeting, it had already started.
- She saw an article about an old friend while she was reading the newspaper.
- She had spent a long time training before she did her first marathon.
Past Perfect Continuous
Chris and Jo were studying at university when they decided to do something different. They had both failed their mid-term exams and were feeling depressed about the future.
One day, they were watching a program about the river Ganges in India. They had never seen anything like it before. They found it very interesting and decided to go there.
So they left their homes in Oxford and flew to India.
After they had been in India for a few weeks, they traveled to the Himalayas.
They started on foot. But while they were carrying their equipment down the mountain, they met someone who wanted to buy it.
When they got to the river, they decided to sell it. They bought a raft and floated down the river.
One day they were floating down the river when they saw a waterfall. They didn’t attach the raft properly, and it came loose.
By the time they reached the bottom of the waterfall, they had had many adventures.
They had experienced things that had never been done before.
They didn’t go back to university.
Is There an Ideal Time to Achieve Great Things?
Is there an ideal time in your life to achieve great things? We all know about the young computer and social networking entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. They were studying at college when they established Facebook.
The man who invented the cathode ray TV, Philo Farnsworth, was also in his 20s when he came up with the idea that led to the modern television. He had the idea when he was plowing a field. He imagined all the furrows as lines on a screen. He had already invented an early version when he was just 15.
So the age at which people become successful varies.
What about the world’s oldest and youngest people to run a marathon?