How to write an engaging and effective presentation script?

Explore expert tips and techniques to elevate your script, ensuring it resonates with your audience and enhances your message.

Bharti Jain

Delivering presentations

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In today's world, presentations are a crucial part of professional communication, whether for pitching a new idea, educating an audience, or persuading potential clients. However, the backbone of any successful presentation is its script. A well-crafted presentation script can captivate your audience and deliver your message effectively. In this blog, we’ll explore the intricacies of crafting such a presentation that not only delivers information but also engages your audience, drawing insights from the tools and strategies provided by Prezent.

What is a presentation script?

It is much more than a mere set of words to be read or spoken; it is a strategic narrative designed to communicate ideas effectively. It’s the roadmap of your presentation content, detailing every turn of your story, every fact you want to highlight, and every emotion you wish to evoke. A well-written script aligns with your visuals and delivery, creating a harmonious and impactful presentation.

Here’s an example of presentation script containing key points only:

academic presentation script example

What are the key elements of a compelling presentation script?

When we talk about crafting a presentation script that captivates and engages, it's essential to focus on the following elements.

1. Write a script with a clear objective

It's a common misconception that the sole purpose is just to relay whatever is on your mind. Every presentation has a specific goal, and it's crucial to identify this goal right from the start. Are you looking to inform, persuade, inspire, or motivate your audience?

For example, if your goal is to persuade your audience, you need an approach as if you're a lawyer making a closing argument. This means your script should be filled with strong, convincing evidence and delivered in a tone that's persuasive and compelling. On the other hand, if your aim is to inform, it should resemble a teacher's lesson plan: well-organized, clear, and educational. Here, the focus is on clarity and thoroughness.

2. Audience-centric approach

Tailoring your content to resonate with your audience's interests and level of understanding is crucial. It’s similar to a chef knowing his diners' preferences before crafting a menu.

For example, If your audience comprises young entrepreneurs, using startup success stories and Silicon Valley anecdotes can make your content more relatable and engaging.

Ignoring the audience’s background and interests is like serving a steak to a vegetarian – it just won’t connect. So you need to ensure that you get your audience to listen.

3. Need to write a strong narrative

A strong narrative structure in your script is essential – consider it the spine of your presentation. It should have a compelling introduction (like the opening scene of a gripping movie), an informative body (similar to the plot development of a novel), and a memorable conclusion (the final scene that leaves the audience thinking).

For instance, Steve Jobs’ iconic iPhone launch presentation in 2007 masterfully followed this structure in his presentation speech, captivating the audience from start to finish.

4. Emotional engagement

Creating an emotional connection with the audience can be achieved through storytelling , anecdotes, or humor.

Take, for instance, the iconic "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. His powerful storytelling and emotional appeal transformed statistical data about racial injustice into a palpable narrative that moved an entire nation.

Similarly, humor can play a significant role in keeping the audience engaged. Ellen DeGeneres' commencement speech at Tulane University in 2009 is a prime example. She skillfully blended humor with her personal life story, especially her struggles and achievements.

academic presentation script example

5. Simplicity and clarity

Conveying your ideas in a straightforward and understandable manner is vital. Think of it as the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Your presentation should be like clear, concise instructions, not a complex, hard-to-decipher manual. Avoid jargon and technical terms unless absolutely necessary.

Remember, Albert Einstein once said,

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Your script should reflect clarity of thought and simplicity of expression.

How to write a presentation script that is effective?

Crafting an engaging presentation script is a multifaceted process that requires attention to detail, a deep understanding of your subject, and a keen sense of audience engagement. Here are some crucial strategies that you should know:

1. In-depth research

To lay a solid foundation for your presentation, start with comprehensive research. Dive deep into your topic to ensure every aspect of your script is well-informed and accurate. This doesn't mean just skimming through the top Google search results. Explore various sources, from scholarly articles to industry reports, to gather a rich array of information.

This depth of understanding not only boosts the credibility of your presentation but also prepares you to confidently handle any questions that might arise during or after your presentation.

2. Conversational tone

A key aspect of a good script is its tone. Aim for a conversational style – as if you're talking to a friend over coffee rather than memorising & lecturing in a formal setting. This approach makes your presentation more relatable and engaging. Avoid complex jargon and technical terms unless necessary, and instead, opt for simple language that flows smoothly. Think of it like storytelling with data.

Check this example to understand better:

Without conversational tone

“In today's discourse, we shall examine the multifaceted and intricate ramifications of digital transformation on global business paradigms."

With conversational tone

"Let's talk about how digital transformation is changing the way we do business around the world. It's pretty fascinating stuff!"

In the first sentence, the formal tone and complex language create a barrier, making the content feel distant and academic. The second sentence, conversational in nature, uses simple language and a friendly approach, inviting the audience into an engaging discussion.

3. Proper visual integration

Visuals are not just decorations; they are integral to reinforcing your message. While scripting, think about how each segment of your speech can be accompanied by relevant visual aids, whether it's a slide, an infographic, or a short video clip. For instance, when discussing a complex process, a diagram can make it easier for your audience to grasp. The key is to ensure that your visuals complement your words, adding clarity and keeping the audience visually engaged.

4. Interactive elements

Engaging your audience is crucial, and interactive elements can significantly boost this engagement. Incorporate rhetorical questions to provoke thought or invite audience participation at certain junctures. You might include a quick poll, a show of hands, or even a brief Q&A session. These elements transform your presentation from a monologue into a dialogue, making it a two-way interaction that keeps your audience actively involved.

5. Rehearse and practice your presentation

The final and perhaps most critical step for the presenter is to refine and rehearse the script several times . This is where you fine-tune your pacing, adjust your tone, and smooth out any rough edges. Rehearsing out loud, ideally in front of a mirror or a test audience, helps identify parts of the script that may need reworking. Pay attention to timing, pauses, and emphasis on key points. Remember, practice doesn’t just make perfect; it builds confidence, ensuring that when it's showtime, you deliver with poise and impact.

How to enhance the effectiveness of a powerpoint presentation through engaging designs?

The integration of engaging presentation designs in your presentation can significantly boost it's effectiveness. Thoughtfully chosen visuals and layout strategies not only grab attention but also make your message more impactful. Let’s delve into how to achieve this synergy:

1. Slide with complementary visuals

Utilize design elements like relevant images, charts, and infographics that reinforce your script’s message. For example, if you're discussing market growth, a well-designed graph can visually represent the data you're talking about, making complex information more accessible and engaging. The key is to choose visuals that directly support and enhance what you're saying.

academic presentation script example

2. Consistent theme

Maintaining a consistent design theme throughout your presentation helps in creating a visually cohesive experience and makes your brand image stronger. This includes consistent use of color schemes, fonts, and graphic styles that align with the tone and content of your presentation. A uniform theme not only looks professional but also helps in keeping the audience’s attention focused on your message.

3. Focus on readability

Ensure that any text on your visuals is clear and easy to comprehend. Overloading slides with text can overwhelm your audience. Instead, opt for key phrases or bullet points that complement your spoken words. The text should be large enough to be easily readable from a distance, and the color contrast should make it stand out against the background.

academic presentation script example

4. Balanced layout

Achieving a balance between visual elements and white space is crucial for a clean and effective slide design. A cluttered slide can distract and confuse your audience, while too much white space may lead to a lack of visual interest. Aim for a layout that emphasizes key elements, using white space to highlight important information without making the slide feel overcrowded.

academic presentation script example

Expert tips for great presentation speech

Delivering a strong presentation is more than just writing; it involves a nuanced blend of delivery techniques, audience interaction, and adaptability. Here are some expert tips presentation style:

1. Dynamic pacing

Varying the pace of your delivery keeps your audience engaged. For example, slow down during complex topics for better understanding, and speed up during familiar or lighter segments to maintain energy. This dynamic pacing ensures that important points are emphasized and the audience remains attentive throughout.

2. Feedback loop

Gathering feedback on your script and presentation style can offer invaluable insights. It’s like holding a mirror to your performance. Present it  to a small group or a trusted colleague and solicit a honest feedback from your audience. Pay attention to their responses and suggestions - they can help you identify areas for improvement that you might not have noticed on your own.

3. Body language and voice modulation

Being conscious of your non-verbal cues and voice modulation can dramatically enhance the effectiveness of your delivery. Your body language should complement the tone of your message.

For instance, use open gestures for welcoming or inclusive points, and firmer gestures for strong, decisive statements. Similarly, modulate your voice to match the content - a softer tone for sensitive topics, or a stronger, more assertive tone for key arguments. This congruence between your words and your delivery makes your presentation more convincing and engaging.

4. Stay adaptable

Adaptability is crucial in presentations. Sometimes, despite all the planning, the audience's reaction may not be what you expected, or technical issues may arise. Be prepared to improvise your approach on the fly.

For instance, if a particular part of your presentation isn't resonating as expected, be ready to shift gears, perhaps by moving to an interactive Q&A earlier than planned.

Staying adaptable ensures that you maintain control of the presentation, no matter the circumstances.

What are the benefits of a good presentation script?

It enhances your ability to connect with the audience. It serves as a guide, ensuring that you deliver your message in a clear, engaging, and relatable way. When you have a well-crafted script, it's easier to explain complex topics in a way that's easy for everyone to understand. This not only keeps your audience attentive but also makes your presentation more memorable.

Additionally, as the presenter, you get confidence boost. Knowing that you have a solid foundation for your presentation helps reduce anxiety and allows you to focus on delivery. As a result, your message doesn't just get heard; it resonates with the audience, leaving them informed, inspired, and often impressed by the clarity and effectiveness of your communication.

How can Prezent help with great presentation scripts?

Prezent, the communication productivity platform for enterprise teams, can significantly enhance the process of writing and delivering presentation scripts in various ways:

1. Efficiency in slide creation: Prezent's AI capabilities streamline slide creation. With a library of over 35,000 slides , presenters can quickly find and customize them, allowing more time to focus on writing a script with great content and delivery.

2. Consistency and brand alignment: Prezent ensures that all slides adhere to brand guidelines , maintaining a professional and cohesive look throughout the presentation. This consistency is crucial for the visual elements.

3. Enhanced storytelling through visuals: The AI-driven slide creation tools in Prezent suggest visual storytelling elements relevant to the script. This enhances audience engagement and understanding, particularly when complex points need to be conveyed.

4. Best practice examples and learning: Prezent offers a feature of best practice examples – a curated collection of exemplary presentations. These examples showcase industry norms and creative approaches, providing valuable insights into effective presentation styles and structures.

5. Personalized insights with fingerprints: The ' Fingerprints ' feature in helps understand your and your audience's strengths, preferences, and areas for growth. This leads to personalized insights, enhancing communication skills and ensuring that the presentation resonates with the audience. Create your Fingerprint today !.

6. Adaptability to content: Prezent adapts slide design based on the script's content, suggesting appropriate charts for analytical sections or illustrative visuals for narrative parts, ensuring the slides are in perfect harmony.

7. Feedback and improvement suggestions: With its advanced AI capabilities, Prezent can offer feedback and improvement suggestions on both the content and design of the presentation, based on communication and design best practices.

Overall, Prezent acts as a comprehensive tool for enhancing presentation scripts, ensuring that the visual components effectively support and elevate the spoken content, while also offering insights and suggestions for continuous improvement. To see Prezent in action you can sign up for our free trial or book a demo today!

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Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

academic presentation script example

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

  • Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

academic presentation script example

  • Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

  • Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

  • Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

  • Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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 Academic Presentations

Academic presentations are an integral part of university study and assessment. Academic presentations may be presented individually or as a group activity but both require the key skills of planning and structuring key information. The key difference between an academic presentation and a general presentation is that it is usually quite formal and includes academic research to evidence the ideas presented. The presentation will include references to credible sources and demonstrate clearly your knowledge and familiarity of the topic.

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  • Think about the aim of your presentation and what you want to achieve.
  • Concentrate on your audience: who   they are and  what   they (want to) know.
  • Choose the topic that interests you: involvement and motivation are key to confidence.
  • Give your presentation a  clear   and  logical   organization so that everyone can follow.
  • Present information  visually : this adds interest to your talk and makes it easier to follow.
  • Practise giving your presentation until you are familiar with the key points; this way you may discover any potential problems and check the timing. Besides, practice will also make you feel more confident.

Basic outline / structure

  • Introduction: introduce the topic, some basic background, thesis (your stance or argument).
  • Outline: provide basic bullet points on the key parts of the presentation.
  • Main body: divide the main body into sections.
  • Evaluation: always include evaluation. This can be a separate section or part of the main body.
  • Conclusion: summarise key points, restate the thesis and make a recommendation / suggestion / prediction.
  • Reference list: create one slide with all your sources.
  • Questions : be prepared to answer questions.
  • Cope with nerves: breathe deeply; it calms you down and stops you from talking too quickly.
  • Control your voice: speak clearly and try to sound interesting by changing intonation and rhythm.
  • Watch your body language: try to give the impression that you are relaxed and confident.
  • Maintain eye contact with your audience: it keeps them interested in what you are saying. For this reason, you should not read.
  • Provide visual information, but do not give too many facts at a time. Give your audience enough time to take them in.
  • Keep attention by asking rhetorical questions.

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Ten smart ways to ace your next academic presentation

Using examples and practical tips, Dorsa Amir explains the techniques that ensure your presentation communicates its message effectively – from slide design to structuring your talk

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As a presenter, your main job is to guide the audience through your argument in the clearest, most engaging, most efficient way possible. You must respect the audience’s time and attention. This means being mindful of how long your presentation is, what you’re including in your slides, and importantly, how it is all packaged and presented.

A great presenter is one who is intentional: each element in the presentation serves a clear function and is intended to support the audience’s understanding of the content.

Here are 10 tips to keep in mind to ensure your presentation hits the mark

1. Any time you put something on your slides, its primary purpose is to help the audience, not you

Many presenters will add copious text or other elements to help themselves remember points they want to make. However, this is usually less helpful for the audience (most of this information belongs in presenter notes, and not on the slides). Think of yourself like a director of a movie. What do you want the audience to focus on at any given moment? What features on your slides will enhance the verbal point you are making and which will distract from it? Be intentional about what you include on your slides, and only include elements that serve a clear and helpful function for the audience.

2. Condense text to the main question or key points of the slide

It may be tempting to write out snippets of the script wholesale and add them to the slides, but this often results in PowerPoint karaoke, where the audience is simply watching you read the text out loud to them. While text is certainly useful for helping to concretise points or make slides more accessible, be judicious about what you include. Each slide should make one or two clear points. It’s better to have more slides with less content than fewer slides that are jam-packed. Of course, the amount of text you include will also be determined by the type of presentation you are giving. If students will be using your slides as a study aid, for example, you may want to include more information than if you are creating a research talk for a conference.

Presentation slide

3. Avoid using too many colours, fonts or animations

Consider elements such as fonts, colours and animations as tools in your presentation toolkit. These elements should be used sparingly and only when they serve a clear purpose. I’m sure you’ve all attended a talk with colours bright enough to burn your retinas or crammed with “fun” fonts such as Comic Sans. Try to refrain from doing that. Animations that allow certain elements to appear or disappear along with your presentation — such as bullet points that appear as you say them — can help direct the attention of the audience. Colour contrasts are primarily helpful for visual segmentation or bringing attention to particular elements. Fonts, colours or flashy animations that are purely decorative are more distracting than helpful.

Presentation slide illustrating simple design without too many elements or colours

4. Avoid colour combinations that are hard to read

Be mindful of how colours interact with each other to either facilitate or inhibit comprehension. White text on black (or the reverse) is often a safe bet. Don’t overdecorate! (See above).

5.  If you’re showing a graph, orient the audience to the axes before plotting the data and make sure they can actually see all of it

I typically show the axes and labels first, making sure to orient everyone to the variables and how they are going to be visualised, and then I reveal the data. This ensures that everyone understands how to interpret the visualisation they are about to see. It is also helpful to restate the key prediction and tell the audience what they should expect to see if the prediction is true, and then plot the data. Use large sizes and clear fonts. I’ve heard way too many people say things like: “You probably can’t read this but…” To that, I want to say: “But you’re the one making the slide! You did this to us!” Don’t be that person.

Presentation slide illustrating need for clear, legible graphics

6.  Use high-resolution images or videos

This is especially true for presentations that will be projected onto a larger surface. If it’s fuzzy on your computer screen, it will look even fuzzier when magnified and projected. Try to integrate high-resolution images and vector graphics to avoid this. When your images contain text, delete those portions and re-enter the text in text boxes that will scale up much more clearly when magnified.

7. When illustrating results, identify one or two key graphs to make your point

The temptation is often to show the audience every single result you found, but this dilutes the overall message you are trying to send. There’s no need to visualise everything: you should focus on the key graphs that tell most or all of the story. If you have built up the presentation in the right way, when the audience see your data visualisation, they will immediately understand what you found and whether it supports your hypothesis. That’s how clear and accessible the graph should be.

Presentation slides illustrating why one or two graphs are clearer than using four

8.  Don’t overload the audience with unnecessary complex jargon or acronyms

Every time you introduce a new term or a brand new acronym (BNA), you are asking the audience to do you a favour and commit this new item to working memory. The audience doesn’t know your presentation; they don’t know what’s going to be important later and what isn’t. They’re trusting that you are only presenting information to them that is relevant and they’re doing their best to follow along. Make this process as easy and enjoyable as possible for them. Be judicious with what you ask them to remember or commit to memory. If you can explain a concept without jargon, avoid the jargon!

9. Enhance accessibility

The Web Accessibility Initiative has a great set of guidelines that I will summarise here. Use easy-to-read fonts in large sizes. Make sure there is enough contrast between colours to make them discernible. When giving virtual talks, consider turning on automatic closed captioning. If it’s feasible, provide annotated slide handouts. During the presentation itself, speak clearly and loudly, avoiding unnecessarily complex vocabulary or culturally specific idioms. Where possible, use a microphone. You should also try to verbally describe pertinent parts of visual information on your slides, such as graphics or videos.

10. Use outline slides and marker slides to segment information

Research shows that we understand and remember information better when it comes in bite-size pieces; think of chapters in a book. To incorporate this structure into your talk, break apart the presentation into smaller pieces. Always incorporate an outline slide that previews the structure of the talk and gives the audience a sense of what to expect. Also, use marker slides to communicate that a new section is beginning. And make sure to wrap up each section with a summary slide.

Example of outline and marker slides

Dorsa Amir is a postdoc in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Giving an Academic Presentation in English

Intermediate Level

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  • Adrian Wallwork 0

English for Academics, Pisa, Italy

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  • Insights based on the author’s presentations as well as observing of thousands of congress presentations
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Table of contents (13 chapters)

Front matter, the key aims of a presentation.

Adrian Wallwork

Resources: Presentations on TED and YouTube

Preparing a script before you create the slides, pronunciation, intonation, and speed of voice, starting your presentation: giving the big picture, explaining technical slides, the visual aspect of slides, the conclusions and final slide, q&a session, doing presentations online, practising, improving, and getting feedback, back matter.

  • presentation skills
  • international conferences
  • non-native audiences

About this book

This book is for university students, with at least a mid-intermediate level of English.

It can be used as part of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, either alone or with the companion volume Writing an Academic Paper in English.

The chapters are independent so that EAP teachers and students can choose those sections that best fit their needs. This means that a course could range from a minimum of 20 hours, up to 60 hours or more.

There is an introductory chapter that includes what role academics play in today’s world, where success is not just measured in terms of paper output and presentations at conferences, but also in involvement interdisciplinary projects and supporting society at large.

Each chapter covers either a particular skill (e.g. preparing a script, pronunciation, visuals, how to begin and end a presentation) or the particular purpose of a specific moment in a presentation. For example, the final slide is designed not just to conclude and thank the audience, but is an opportunity to reach out for collaborations and assistance. The aims of each part of a presentation are also highlighted by comparisons with non-academic situations where similar skills are required.

The course is highly practical with screenshots from real presentations given by PhD students. It is also designed to be fun to use.

Other books in the series:

Writing an Academic Paper in English

Essential English Grammar and Communication Strategies

Adrian Wallwork is the author of more than 40 ELT and EAP textbooks. He has trained several thousand PhD students and researchers from around 50 countries to write research papers and give presentations. He is also the co-founder of e4ac.com, an editing agency for non-native English-speaking researchers.

Authors and Affiliations

About the author.

Adrian Wallwork is the co-founder of English for Academics (e4ac.com), which specializes in editing and revising scientific papers, as well as teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to PhD students. He has written course books for Oxford University Press, discussion books for Cambridge University Press, and other books for BEP and Scholastic and several publishers in Italy. Adrian also self-publishes discussion books for the TEFL market (tefldiscussions.com). 

For SpringerNature, he has written three series of books on Academic English, Business English and General English.

His passion is teaching PhD students and researchers how to write and present their research.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Giving an Academic Presentation in English

Book Subtitle : Intermediate Level

Authors : Adrian Wallwork

Series Title : English for Academic Research

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95609-7

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Education , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-95608-0 Published: 24 June 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-95609-7 Published: 23 June 2022

Series ISSN : 2625-3445

Series E-ISSN : 2625-3453

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XI, 238

Number of Illustrations : 275 b/w illustrations, 102 illustrations in colour

Topics : Linguistics, general , Language Education

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How To Write A Presentation 101 | Step-by-Step Guides with Best Examples | 2024 Reveals

How To Write A Presentation 101 | Step-by-Step Guides with Best Examples | 2024 Reveals

Jane Ng • 05 Apr 2024 • 8 min read

Is it difficult to start of presentation? You’re standing before a room full of eager listeners, ready to share your knowledge and captivate their attention. But where do you begin? How do you structure your ideas and convey them effectively?

Take a deep breath, and fear not! In this article, we’ll provide a road map on how to write a presentation covering everything from crafting a script to creating an engaging introduction.

So, let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

What is a presentation , what should be in a powerful presentation.

  • How To Write A Presentation Script
  • How to Write A Presentation Introduction 

Key Takeaways

Tips for better presentation.

  • How to start a presentation
  • How to introduce yourself

Alternative Text

Start in seconds.

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Presentations are all about connecting with your audience. 

Presenting is a fantastic way to share information, ideas, or arguments with your audience. Think of it as a structured approach to effectively convey your message. And you’ve got options such as slideshows, speeches, demos, videos, and even multimedia presentations!

The purpose of a presentation can vary depending on the situation and what the presenter wants to achieve. 

  • In the business world, presentations are commonly used to pitch proposals, share reports, or make sales pitches. 
  • In educational settings, presentations are a go-to for teaching or delivering engaging lectures. 
  • For conferences, seminars, and public events—presentations are perfect for dishing out information, inspiring folks, or even persuading the audience.

That sounds brilliant. But, how to write a presentation?

How To Write A Presentation

How To Write A Presentation? What should be in a powerful presentation? A great presentation encompasses several key elements to captivate your audience and effectively convey your message. Here’s what you should consider including in a winning presentation:

  • Clear and Engaging Introduction: Start your presentation with a bang! Hook your audience’s attention right from the beginning by using a captivating story, a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or a powerful quote. Clearly state the purpose of your presentation and establish a connection with your listeners.
  • Well-Structured Content: Organize your content logically and coherently. Divide your presentation into sections or main points and provide smooth transitions between them. Each section should flow seamlessly into the next, creating a cohesive narrative. Use clear headings and subheadings to guide your audience through the presentation.
  • Compelling Visuals: Incorporate visual aids, such as images, graphs, or videos, to enhance your presentation. Make sure your visuals are visually appealing, relevant, and easy to understand. Use a clean and uncluttered design with legible fonts and appropriate color schemes. 
  • Engaging Delivery: Pay attention to your delivery style and body language. You should maintain eye contact with your audience, use gestures to emphasize key points, and vary your tone of voice to keep the presentation dynamic. 
  • Clear and Memorable Conclusion: Leave your audience with a lasting impression by providing a strong closing statement, a call to action, or a thought-provoking question. Make sure your conclusion ties back to your introduction and reinforces the core message of your presentation.

academic presentation script example

How To Write A Presentation Script (With Examples)

To successfully convey your message to your audience, you must carefully craft and organize your presentation script. Here are steps on how to write a presentation script: 

1/ Understand Your Purpose and Audience

  • Clarify the purpose of your presentation. Are you informing, persuading, or entertaining?
  • Identify your target audience and their knowledge level, interests, and expectations.
  • Define what presentation format you want to use

2/ Outline the Structure of Your Presentation

Strong opening.

Start with an engaging opening that grabs the audience’s attention and introduces your topic. Some types of openings you can use are: 

  • Start with a Thought-Provoking Question: “Have you ever…?”
  • Begin with a Surprising Fact or Statistic: “Did you know that….?”
  • Use a Powerful Quote: “As Maya Angelou once said,….”
  • Tell a Compelling Story : “Picture this: You’re standing at….”
  • Start with a Bold Statement: “In the fast-paced digital age….”

Main Points

Clearly state your main points or key ideas that you will discuss throughout the presentation.

  • Clearly State the Purpose and Main Points: Example: “In this presentation, we will delve into three key areas. First,… Next,… Finally,…. we’ll discuss….”
  • Provide Background and Context: Example: “Before we dive into the details, let’s understand the basics of…..”
  • Present Supporting Information and Examples: Example: “To illustrate…., let’s look at an example. In,…..”
  • Address Counterarguments or Potential Concerns: Example: “While…, we must also consider… .”
  • Recap Key Points and Transition to the Next Section: Example: “To summarize, we’ve… Now, let’s shift our focus to…”

Remember to organize your content logically and coherently, ensuring smooth transitions between sections.

You can conclude with a strong closing statement summarizing your main points and leaving a lasting impression. Example: “As we conclude our presentation, it’s clear that… By…., we can….”

3/ Craft Clear and Concise Sentences

Once you’ve outlined your presentation, you need to edit your sentences. Use clear and straightforward language to ensure your message is easily understood.

Alternatively, you can break down complex ideas into simpler concepts and provide clear explanations or examples to aid comprehension.

4/ Use Visual Aids and Supporting Materials

Use supporting materials such as statistics, research findings, or real-life examples to back up your points and make them more compelling. 

  • Example: “As you can see from this graph,… This demonstrates….”

5/ Include Engagement Techniques

Incorporate interactive elements to engage your audience, such as Q&A sessions , conducting live polls, or encouraging participation. You can also spin more funs into group, by randomly dividing people into different groups to get more diverse feedbacks!

6/ Rehearse and Revise

  • Practice delivering your presentation script to familiarize yourself with the content and improve your delivery.
  • Revise and edit your script as needed, removing any unnecessary information or repetitions.

7/ Seek Feedback

You can share your script or deliver a practice presentation to a trusted friend, colleague, or mentor to gather feedback on your script and make adjustments accordingly.

More on Script Presentation

academic presentation script example

How to Write A Presentation Introduction with Examples

How to write presentations that are engaging and visually appealing? Looking for introduction ideas for the presentation? As mentioned earlier, once you have completed your script, it’s crucial to focus on editing and refining the most critical element—the opening of your presentation – the section that determines whether you can captivate and retain your audience’s attention right from the start. 

Here is a guide on how to craft an opening that grabs your audience’s attention from the very first minute: 

1/ Start with a Hook

To begin, you can choose from five different openings mentioned in the script based on your desired purpose and content. Alternatively, you can opt for the approach that resonates with you the most, and instills your confidence. Remember, the key is to choose a starting point that aligns with your objectives and allows you to deliver your message effectively.

2/ Establish Relevance and Context

Then you should establish the topic of your presentation and explain why it is important or relevant to your audience. Connect the topic to their interests, challenges, or aspirations to create a sense of relevance.

3/ State the Purpose

Clearly articulate the purpose or goal of your presentation. Let the audience know what they can expect to gain or achieve by listening to your presentation.

4/ Preview Your Main Points

Give a brief overview of the main points or sections you will cover in your presentation. It helps the audience understand the structure and flow of your presentation and creates anticipation.

5/ Establish Credibility

Share your expertise or credentials related to the topic to build trust with the audience, such as a brief personal story, relevant experience, or mentioning your professional background.

6/ Engage Emotionally

Connect emotional levels with your audience by appealing to their aspirations, fears, desires, or values. They help create a deeper connection and engagement from the very beginning.

Make sure your introduction is concise and to the point. Avoid unnecessary details or lengthy explanations. Aim for clarity and brevity to maintain the audience’s attention.

For example, Topic: Work-life balance

“Good morning, everyone! Can you imagine waking up each day feeling energized and ready to conquer both your personal and professional pursuits? Well, that’s exactly what we’ll explore today – the wonderful world of work-life balance. In a fast-paced society where work seems to consume every waking hour, it’s vital to find that spot where our careers and personal lives harmoniously coexist. Throughout this presentation, we’ll dive into practical strategies that help us achieve that coveted balance, boost productivity, and nurture our overall well-being. 

But before we dive in, let me share a bit about my journey. As a working professional and a passionate advocate for work-life balance, I have spent years researching and implementing strategies that have transformed my own life. I am excited to share my knowledge and experiences with all of you today, with the hope of inspiring positive change and creating a more fulfilling work-life balance for everyone in this room. So, let’s get started!”

🎉 Check out: How to Start a Presentation?

academic presentation script example

Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or new to the stage, understanding how to write a presentation that conveys your message effectively is a valuable skill. By following the steps in this guide, you can become a captivating presenter and make your mark in every presentation you deliver.

Additionally, AhaSlides can significantly enhance your presentation’s impact. With AhaSlides, you can use live polls , quizzes , and word cloud to turn your presentation into an engaging and interactive experience. Let’s take a moment to explore our vast template library !

Frequently Asked Questions

How to write a presentation step by step .

You can refer to our step-by-step guide on How To Write A Presentation Script: Understand Your Purpose and Audience Outline the Structure of Your Presentation Craft Clear and Concise Sentences Use Visual Aids and Supporting Material Include Engagement Techniques Rehearse and Revise Seek Feedback

How do you start a presentation? 

You can start with an engaging opening that grabs the audience’s attention and introduces your topic. Consider using one of the following approaches: Start with a Thought-Provoking Question: “Have you ever…?” Begin with a Surprising Fact or Statistic: “Did you know that….?” Use a Powerful Quote: “As Maya Angelou once said,….” Tell a Compelling Story : “Picture this: You’re standing at….” Start with a Bold Statement: “In the fast-paced digital age….”

What are the five parts of a presentation?

When it comes to presentation writing, a typical presentation consists of the following five parts: Introduction: Capturing the audience’s attention, introducing yourself, stating the purpose, and providing an overview. Main Body: Presenting main points, evidence, examples, and arguments. Visual Aids: Using visuals to enhance understanding and engage the audience. Conclusion: Summarizing main points, restating key message, and leaving a memorable takeaway or call to action. Q&A or Discussion: Optional part for addressing questions and encouraging audience participation.

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10 tips for delivering an academic presentation with impact

Professor dawid hanak.

  • July 27, 2022
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Have you ever done an academic presentation? I bet you did. Powerpoint presentations are widely used to share your research with others during academic conferences, progress review meetings, PhD viva examinations and so on. 

I do believe that with so many presentation tools available right now, we tend to overuse PowerPoint or Keynote in our work. You may be familiar with the term death by PowerPoint slides. If you aren’t, here’s a definition by TechTarget that I like the most: 

“ Death by PowerPoint is a phenomenon caused by the poor use of presentation software. 

Key contributors to death by PowerPoint include confusing graphics, slides with too much text and presenters whose idea of a good presentation is to read 40 slides out loud. Death by PowerPoint is easily recognized by observing the audience members’ glazed eyes, furtive use of smartphones and trips to the bathroom.”

canva powerpoint templates and presentation software examples for academic presentations

It is not the type of academic presentation delivered by Motivated Academics ! As motivated academics, we aim to inspire our audience with our research and give them a gift of knowledge. We’re not doing our presentation during an academic conference for the sake of ticking the box for our professional development reviews or promotion cases. We’re doing this because we want to share our research and share our findings with others.

You may, however, wonder why presentation skills are important? Maybe you haven’t presented at an academic conference or had a progress review meeting yet. Maybe you detest delivering academic presentations and feel anxious about standing in front of other people. 

I get you – I was there myself. And let me reassure you, this is a normal feeling. Not each one of us was born a speaker. I wasn’t definitely and still remember my first conference presentation when I struggled to get any words out of my mouth. I stuttered, sweated and felt embarrassed afterwards. That was during my MSc programme when I was presenting my extracurricular research on heat pumps. 

But guess what.

The more presentations I did over the past years, the more presentation slides I’ve developed, the easier it got. Now I’m actually looking forward to doing a conference presentation, whether face-to-face or online. I even started doing live events on LinkedIn and recorded online courses . 

Why was I able to develop presentation skills? I knew these were crucial for building a successful academic career. 

That’s why I reflected on my approach to preparing academic presentations and will share my tips on how you can prepare a good academic presentation. I do trust my presentation guidelines for students and researchers will be useful for you and will help you advance your academic career.

This article will not tell you how to do the presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote, but I am happy to put a workshop together on this topic if this would be of interest. So now let’s move to academic presentation tips! 

academic presentation for phd viva or project progress meeting

Table of Contents

Academic presentation tip #1: Keep your presentation slides tidy and clear

The key piece of advice I usually give to my students and researcher is that a good academic presentation is tidy, concise and doesn’t abuse the creative features of PowerPoint or Keynote. 

I know there are many presentation designs and templates available free of charge on the internet. These tend to include lots of features, like text transitions, audio, videos and so on. Although a good video can add value to your presentation, a presentation that zooms in and out may make your audience nauseous.

Similarly, too many transitions and too much text on your presentation slides may make it look unprofessional and may distract your audience from the key messages that you are presenting. Therefore, keep your presentation design neat and simple to maximise impact. 

Academic presentation tip #2: Use consistent presentation colour palette

In addition to having a clean and neat presentation design, you may want to use a consistent presentation palette. This can be based on the colour palette provided by your university or the academic conference organiser. 

I understand that this may be surprising, but if you want to deliver a good academic presentation, you want to ensure it is consistent. You would be surprised how many times I saw a conference presentation that looked like a composition of several different presentations. It was apparent that someone stitched together different presentation slides, and didn’t bother to make them consistent. 

As a Motivated Academic, you want your academic presentation to be consistent. The easiest way to do it is to develop your own academic presentation template that you will use throughout your academic career. 

academic presentation help for researchres

Academic presentation tip #3: Start with a strong presentation opening statement 

One of the crucial decisions that you will need to make when developing your presentation is to decide how to start a presentation speech. Why is this important? Well, the way you start your presentaiton will either capture your audience and will give them a promise of valuable content, or will lead them to the conclusion that it is not worth focusing on your presentation. 

Of course, you want them to focus on what you have to say! That’s why the first presentation opening lines play a crucial role in how other people receive your presentaiton. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to think about how you can engage your audience from the very beginning of your presentation. For example, your presentation starting words may focus on the research question or exciting results you obtained in your research, even before introducing yourself.

Academic presentation tip #4: How to design an interesting presentation first page

Building on the above, you may use the presentation first slide design that promotes engagement and stimulates interest. There are many presentation templates on Canva or PowerPoint that can help you achieve this. But the rule is simple. Please don’t follow the conventional way people prepare their conference presentation slides. 

What does this mean? Well, if you attended any conference recently, you’d see that most speakers include the title of their speech and their contact details. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it is kind of… boring? I’ve been doing this myself! 

A good first slide design should help you grab the attention of your audience. Therefore, instead of simply stating the title of your presentaiton or research, you may include an intriguing research question and you may give a hint about the answer. You may also include a picture summarising your results or showing your experimental facility. Think about how you could summarise the exciting aspects of your research in a single sentence or picture, and include it on the first slide. 

academic presentation templates and ppt presentation designs for academics

Academic presentation tip #5: End with exciting and actionable presentation conclusions

Another critical part of each academic presentation is the ending. Why? Because your audience will most likely remember the last couple of slides that you will present in your speech. That is why you need to decide on how to close and conclude your presentation. 

One of the most common mistakes researchers make is to end their presentations with the “thank you” slide. I did this too, but then I realised that the last thing people see during my conference presentation is the “thank you” slide. It is OK, but it didn’t help me to convey my message to the fullest extent. 

That’s why you should end your presentation with a summary of the most exciting outcomes of your research and a list of actionable conclusions from your work. 

Academic presentation tip #6: Design captivating presentation ending slide

It brings me to the last slide of the presentation. As I mentioned above, the “thank you” slide is the common way researchers end their presentations. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it presents a missed opportunity. 

That is why I design the last slide in one of two ways for most of my academic presentations, depending on what I want to achieve with it.

If I want people to contact me after the presentation, I leave my contact details with the call to action to contact me on the last slide of presentation.

Suppose I want people to remember specific aspects of my presentation. In that case, I design the last slide of my presentation as a list of 3-5 bullets that summarise the key messages I want them to remember. This is one of the best academic career tips I received during my postdoc. Why? Well, frequently during the conference Q&A sessions, you see the “thank you” slide displayed and may not remember what the presentation was exactly about – especially if it wasn’t particularly well-delivered or designed.

On the other hand, a good academic presentaiton that displays the summary slide at the end may lead to more discussion and engagement from the audience during the Q&A session. This is because the audience can quickly remind themselves what the presentation was about and engage with the speaker.    

visual presentation examples to enhance your academic career

Academic presentation tip #7: Draft presentation speech script early

One of the key reasons why your audience may lose interest in your presentation is lack of clarity and lack of logical flow of information. These can easily confuse and, as you may know, confused minds won’t retain information. This is important not only in the context of your next academic conference but your entire academic career, so write it down! 

How can you sort this out? Well, the easiest way to ensure your presentation flows well is to develop a presentation script outline before you start putting together your slide deck. It will allow you to maintain the focus of your presentation, include the key information to share with your audience, and remove the unnecessary fluff. The last thing you want in your academic presentation is content that will distract people from the key outcomes of your research. 

Academic presentation tip #8: Prepare presentation cue cards to reduce anxiety

I mentioned earlier in this article that I was really anxious about giving presentations at the very beginning of my academic career. I would expect this is a normal response of our body to stress – it’s stressful to be in the spotlight! However, till today I sometimes feel anxious about doing lives or presenting in front of the audience. As an introvert, it’s been a difficult part of my academic career.

The good thing is that it gets easier with practice. Presentation skills are something that each one of us can develop, by doing more and more and even more presentations. 

But how to manage anxiety and deliver a good academic presentation at the same time? During my masters, I learnt about cue cards and these saved me from getting crazy. In short, cue cards are small pieces of paper that include a high-level summary of the key points you want to discuss. These usually include a list of 3-6 bullet points. 

Depending on how long your presentation is, you would use several cue cards for the entire presentation or one cue card for each slide. You can develop your cue cards based on your presentation script outline. 

how to do presentation with powerpoint for academic conference and academic career

Academic presentation tip #9: Practice before presenting to keep your anxiety under control 

I believe this is something that all of us do but I wanted to emphasise the importance of practising your presentation before presenting your work at a conference or project report. 

By practising your presentation, you will be able to iron out any bumps and humps in your delivery and use of cue cards. Ideally, you’d present your work in front of colleagues so that you could test how your presentation opening statement, presentation flow and the last slide of presentation resonate with them. 

But the most important benefit of practising before presenting is that you will be able to keep your anxiety under control. 

Academic presentation tip #10: Prepare PPT presentation and PDF backup copy to reduce anxiety 

A final tip that I’d like to share with you here is about the format of your presentation. I remember that I was delivering a presentation at an academic conference couple of years ago. Halfway through the presentation, I realised that my figures were displayed incorrectly, making my presentation look unreadable and providing no value to the audience. 

Luckily I had a PDF version of my PPT presentation on my memory stick and I was able to quickly change to the PDF format for the remaining part of my presentation. As a result, something that could have easily led to anxiety was one of the turning points for my academic career and approach to academic presentations. 

That’s why I strongly encourage you to have backup copies of your presentations in the PDF version, even if the organisers request you to send the PPT presentation. 

how to prepare captivating academic presentation for academic conference or PhD viva

Conclusions

If you want to succeed in an academic career, you need to develop strong presentation skills. Being able to deliver a good academic presentation will take away anxiety associated with presenting your work, regardless of whether you deliver a conference presentation or progress review presentation. I trust the tips I shared here with you are helpful and will support you in delivering better academic presentations. 

What is the best tip that you received to improve your academic presentation skills?

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How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard

For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a  great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.

Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.

Why is structuring a presentation so important?

If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.

Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information  40% more accurately  than unstructured information.

In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.

What will affect your presentation structure?

Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:

  • Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
  • How  knowledgeable the audience  already is on the given subject
  • How much interaction you want from the audience
  • Any time constraints there are for your talk
  • What setting you are in
  • Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance

Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:

  • What is your presentation’s aim?
  • Who are the audience?
  • What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?

When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.

Good presentation structure is important for a presentation

What is the typical presentation structure?

This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.

1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself

Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.

Read our tips on  How to Start a Presentation Effectively

2. Introduction

In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:

  • Introduce your general topic
  • Explain your topic area
  • State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
  • State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
  • Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
  • Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation

In this section also explain:

  • The length of the talk.
  • Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
  • If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.

The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a  sales pitch  may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.

Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.

3. The main body of your talk

The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.

  • Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
  • Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
  • Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
  • Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.

When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.

4. Conclusion

In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.

Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.

Follow these steps:

  • Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
  • Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
  • Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
  • Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
  • Move on to the last section

5. Thank the audience and invite questions

Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to  ask any questions  they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.

Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.

Questions being asked after a presentation

Other common presentation structures

The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:

Demonstration

Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.

  • Explain why the product is valuable.
  • Describe why the product is necessary.
  • Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
  • Demonstrate the product  to support what you’ve been saying.
  • Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.

Problem-solution

This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.

  • Briefly frame the issue.
  • Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
  • Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
  • Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.

Storytelling

As well as incorporating  stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.

Storytelling for Business Success  webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.

Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.

  • Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma

Remaining method

The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.

  • Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
  • Rebut your opponents’ solutions  – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
  • After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.

Transitions

When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done  using speech transitions  which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.

Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:

Moving from the introduction to the first point

Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:

  • Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
  • First, let’s begin with…
  • I will first cover…
  • My first point covers…
  • To get started, let’s look at…

Shifting between similar points

Move from one point to a similar one:

  • In the same way…
  • Likewise…
  • Equally…
  • This is similar to…
  • Similarly…

Internal summaries

Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:

  • What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
  • What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
  • How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
  • What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”

Physical movement

You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.

A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:

  • Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
  • For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
  • You discuss your second point from the centre again.
  • You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
  • The conclusion occurs in the centre.

Key slides for your presentation

Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:

  • An intro slide outlining your ideas
  • A  summary slide  with core points to remember
  • High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying

There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:

  • Don’t over fill them  – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
  • A picture says a thousand words  – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
  • Make them readable  – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
  • Don’t rush through slides  – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.

Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a  10-20-30 rule :

  • There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
  • The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
  • The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.

Here are some additional resources for slide design:

  • 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
  • 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
  • 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea

Group Presentations

Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices.  Clean transitioning between speakers  is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:

  • Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
  • Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
  • Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
  • The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”

From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.

Example of great presentation structure and delivery

Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.

How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt

This presentation by ex-Google CEO  Eric Schmidt  demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.

Start with why – by Simon Sinek

Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.

The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby

Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.

However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.

As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.

By preparing a solid structure, and  practising your talk  beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.

It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.

Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.

Academic presentations: Structure

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“A solid structure is the foundation of a coherent presentation, and shows the relationship between the parts and whole.” Nancy Duarte,  Resonate

A presentation that has a strong, clear structure is a presentation that is easy to follow. Without structure, a presentation can be confusing to an audience. How do they know if you are going to cover what they need to know? How can they tell which slides contain the most important points? This page considers some ways that you can organise your slides to give shape to your presentation as a whole.

Basic presentation structure

Every presentation should flow like a good story. It should involve  the audience directly.

Image of an open book showing the beginning, middle and end of the story

  • The  beginning  section is where you hook them. Start with the general picture then explain the specific problem and how by listening to your presentation you can solve it for them.
  • The  middle  section should contain the main detail of your presentation, and can be organised in a number of ways (two good ones are explained below).
  • Finally your  end  section should summarise the presentation and lead the audience to the next step.

Design your slides so that these sections  look distinctive  and any  key points  stand out.

Beginning section

This section is all about drawing the audience in; giving them a reason to want to listen to the main part of your presentation.

You can include any or all of the following:

  • A really well designed title slide that grabs the attention
  • A slide that gives the audience the big picture
  • A slide that shows what you will be focusing on
  • A slide that uses the word 'you' or 'your' in the title to connect with the audience
  • A slide that tells the audience what is to come in your presentation (its structure)

Visual version of the points above

After your title slide, you need slides covering these areas

Middle section structure option 1 - key points

Several authors suggest using a structure that involves an introduction followed by a middle section containing key point slides (usually 3).

The ideas is that there is a  hierarchy  of slides so that after each key point you have other slides that explain or add detail to that key point.

Image showing the 3 large boxes broken down to show a key point box followed by several detail boxes

Cliff Atkinson (writer of the book  Beyond Bullet Points ) suggested using a table in MSWord (similar to the one in the template that is available to download at the bottom of this page) to help you structure and plan your presentation before you even open PowerPoint. This means you can concentrate on your story before getting distracted by design and content issues. We have copy of the book in our library: Beyond Bullet Points:  Beyond Bullet Points .

Middle section option 2 - sparkline

For her book  Resonate  Nancy Duarte looked in detail at the structure of successful presentations throughout history (even back to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address). She discovered that many have the same structural form which she calls a 'sparkline'.

Image of sparkline structure showing a line starting low and then moving up and down several times before ending high - low sections are labelled what is and high sections what could be

This structure makes a clear distinction between  what is  (the position before the presentation is seen and acted upon) and  what could be  (the position after the presentation is seen and acted upon). The audience is introduced to the what is  state at the beginning of the presentation and then switched back and forth between  what could be  and  what is  several times before ending in the  what could be  condition, which she calls  Reward:New Bliss .

Nancy explains this better here:  Sparkline Overview .

In terms of academic work the  what is  is the current level of knowledge or previous thinking on a subject and the  what could be  is the new knowledge or new thinking. The  new bliss  is what the audience could do or learn next now that they are aware of the change. 

End section

The end of your presentation is a very powerful part because it contains your final words, the ones that the audience will take away with them. After you have finished your middle section, have at least one slide that summarises your main points  and one slide that leaves the audience with  the most important point  of your presentation - the one you would like them to remember even if they forget everything else.

Visual summary of the above paragraph

Include slides that show these in your end section

DO NOT  finish with a slide that says  Any Questions?  or  Thanks for Listening  as this a waste of your final slide and does not need a visual image to help the audience understand your words. This slide could potentially be viewed longer than any other slide (whilst you answer your questions or receive feedback) and so you want to make sure it contains something that is important to both you and the audience.

Any questions slide (crossed out)

These slides are a waste of your last slide - use the final slide for your most important point not a throwaway.

Template for structuring an academic presentation

Thumbnail image of template

This MSWord document is a template for structuring a typical academic presentation, it can be adapted and changed if necessary depending on how long the presentation you need to give is. Try to fill it in using full sentences as these will become your slide titles .

The blue sections are optional. The NEED and TASK sections are most suited to research presentations.

This is designed for a presentation between 20-30 minutes long. Shorter presentations will have no explanatory points and longer presentations will need more explanatory points.

This is adapted from Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points template. See the link to the book above.

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  • Apr 11, 2023

How to design an impactful 3MT slide (with examples!)

things going into a funnel to make a 3MT slide

What can you do in three minutes? Brush your teeth, make a coffee?

How about explain your entire PhD thesis? 😅

Believe it or not, that’s what thousands of people do each year in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT ® ); a global public speaking competition where PhD students explain the scope and impact of their research in, you guessed it, just three minutes . ⏰

And if you’re reading this, perhaps you’re an aspiring 3MT-er yourself, on the hunt for some inspiration to design an impactful 3MT slide to accompany your talk.

Sound like you? Then you’ve come to the right place.

Previously, we gave you some tips and tricks on how to write a winning 3MT script , but in this instalment of our 3MT series, we’re switching gears to cover another very important aspect:

We’ve trawled the internet to discover what actually makes a good three minute thesis slide, and in this blog, we’ll cover some do’s and don’ts to help you design one that’s memorable and impactful. To help bring these concepts home, we’ll also include some examples that we love from past 3MT winners and finalists.

But before we do that, let’s recap some important rules related to the 3MT slide:

3MT slide rules

So, in short, the 3MT slide obviously needs to be fairly simple. But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring.

Hold up… if the 3MT is a public speaking competition, why is the slide even important? Surely only what you speak about matters, right? WRONG! 🙅‍♀️

The 3MT competition is about so much more than just what you say. It’s also about what you do and what you show And what you show during your 3MT is where your nifty little slide comes in.

Not only is the PowerPoint slide a key component of the 3MT judging criteria , it also helps create a lasting mental image for the judges. After all, you can’t win the 3MT if the audience and judges can’t even remember what your research is about!

So, hopefully we’ve been able to convince you about just how important having a good slide is. But how do you design an impactful 3MT slide, you ask?

Well, here are 5 of our top tips:

Tip #1 : Avoid data dumping 📊

You might be familiar with those boring old PowerPoint presentations that seem to appear at every conference. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones cluttered with complex graphs, huge tables, and enough numbers to put even the most experienced professors to sleep.

May I present to you… Exhibit A:

My PhD research example slide

Look familiar? Good. Now lock the memory away in a distant room of your mind palace, because that’s exactly what you DON’T want in a 3MT slide (or really, in any slide for that matter…)

Unlike a conference presentation, your 3MT slide should simply act to enhance and complement your script, rather than be used to display complex data and graphs. In fact, I would suggest avoiding the use of any complex graphs and data tables at all, because they just end up detracting attention from what you’re saying.

If you choose to present some important data or statistics in your 3MT slide, consider swapping out graphs with simple infographics , like pie charts or diagrams:

an image displaying From This to This turning a graph into an infographic of a salad bowl

As you can see, simple infographics and eye-catching figures are a much more visually stimulating way to present information, especially compared to data-heavy graphs and tables. And they’re surprisingly easy to make using tools like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Express .

So, if in doubt, leave complex data out. 🚫

In fact, you’ll find that most successful 3MT-ers show little to no data at all in their slides and intentionally keep them very conceptual, which brings me to tip #2 .

Tip #2 : Keep it conceptual 💡

Perhaps you’re sensing a general theme here… that typically less is more when it comes to a 3MT slide. This allows the focus of the presentation to be on the speaker, the slide simply acting as a visual aid to complement the story . And when it’s a public speaking competition, I’d say that’s pretty important.

In our humble opinion, some of the most effective and memorable 3MT slides are those that present an image or diagram that conveys a single underpinning concept or idea .

You might recall from our ‘ How to Write a Winning 3MT Script ’ blog post, that many successful 3MT scripts incorporate things like humour, analogies , or fictional characters. In these situations, it can be helpful for the contents of the slide to reflect this.

One of my favourite examples of this comes from 2016 Asia-Pacific 3MT Winner, Joshua Chu-Tan , who spoke about his research on gene therapy treatments for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) to target the root of vision loss. In his winning presentation, he says:

quote for Joshua Chu-Tan, winner of 3MT, about age-related macular degeneration

Rather than using complex diagrams to show the theory, he opted for this simple, yet extremely powerful image that highlights the impact of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration. And, seeing as this image has stuck in my memory for years, I’d say it was a pretty good choice.

As another example, back when I won the 3MT , I used an analogy to draw parallels between A) cars carrying passengers on a highway, and B) nanoparticles carrying drugs along a blood vessel. So, my 3MT slide portrayed a busy highway with signage to show which hypothetical organs the cars were headed towards:

3MT quote from Cintya Dharmayanti, 3MT winner, about nanoparticles being tiny carriers on a highway

Basically, the overarching message is to keep it simple.

And that’s all well and good… But where do you even start?

Your first step is to write your 3MT script . Then, once you have your script prepared, use it as a tool to help you brainstorm ideas for your slide. Note whether you’ve used any analogies, introduced any characters, or covered certain concepts, and then based on this information, find or create a visual to match! 🖼 This might be a little different to your usual scientific presentations, where you would normally prepare your slides first, then come up with what you are going to say after, but trust me – it works!

Tip #3 : Choose an eye-catching visual… or make one 👀

In the same way that ‘ the hook’ in your 3MT script helps to pique the audience’s attention, the slide is another important tool to capture their attention and keep them engaged. But to do this, it needs to be eye-catching and interesting .

We’ve noticed that most winning 3MTs have slides that generally fall under one of two categories: images or diagrams .

These are usually photographs or illustrations that complement the script in some way — containing a reference to the concept, analogy or character(s) that were introduced in the script.

For example, let’s say you introduced a fictional character in your 3MT script. By visually showing this character in your slide, it helps the audience form a connection with them and taps into their sense of empathy. Let’s look at an example:

Amanda Khamis, 3MT winner, on treatments for babies with cerebral palsy

As you can see, using this photograph makes for a really effective and impactful slide because it elicits a strong emotional response. Come on… how can you not love that adorable little face, right? 🥺

However, the images don’t have to be of people to be effective – they can also be more conceptual.

For instance, one 3MT finalist spoke about their research on detecting diseases, like cancer, based on characteristic molecules present in the breath. In their slide, they showed an illustration of breath molecules exiting the lungs and mouth to be caught in a net:

Merryn Baker, 3MT winner, quote about a material that can capture molecules from the breath like a net

Not only is this image a great reference to the net analogy used, but we (as the audience) are able to get a basic idea about the research concept based on the slide alone, which really helps it stick in our memory!

Of course, while we’ve highlighted some great examples, you should choose whatever image speaks to you and your research. Some useful resources to find images for your 3MT slide include iStock Photo and Adobe Stock Photos (making sure to provide attribution where required), or you can even be extra creative and take your own photo, or create your own image ! 📸

Aside from images, schematic diagrams can be another great way to conceptualise and visualise your research. However, to be effective as 3MT slides, the diagrams need to be simple and easy to understand.

Ideally, they should be short, and the outcomes immediately recognisable . Avoid using complex diagrams that you’ve directly copy-pasted from a paper, as these generally take a lot more time and concentration to understand.

A good example of a diagram for a 3MT slide was used by the 2020 Asia-Pacific 3MT winner , whose research focused on the development of a liquid glue to help measure electrical signals from plants as a way to measure their health:

example slide from Luo Yifei, 3MT winner, about developing a liquid glue that can detect plant electrical signals

In this example, it’s easy to understand what the research is about, what’s being measured, and what the desired outcomes are, thanks to the clear illustrations and emotive flower drawings.

So, if done well, diagrams can be a really powerful tool to conceptualise your research. If you want to try and create one yourself, there are lots of useful tools you can use, like Adobe Illustrator , Canva , or BioRender , to name a few.

Get creative!

Tip #4 : Minimise text 💬

When it comes to presentations, there’s nothing worse than being in the audience, staring at a PowerPoint slide, only to find a wall of text staring back at you. Not only is it super distracting, but aesthetically, it also leaves much to be desired.

And let’s be honest, if the audience is reading your slide, then they’re not listening to you… and vice versa. Which, for the 3MT, is a very big problem.

To prevent this, try to avoid including large bodies of text on your 3MT slide . See if you can verbally communicate the information instead, or alternatively, replace the text with an image that conveys the same message. After all, they say a picture speaks a thousand words.

If you really need to include some text, as in the case of simple diagrams, try to keep it to a minimum and limit yourself to 15 words maximum.

Any text you do include should use a font size that can be easily seen from the back of the room (i.e., 24 pt. minimum). And, while they sometimes have their time and place, try to avoid using any cursive, funky, or hard-to-read fonts . Comic sans, I’m looking at you. 😒

Tip #5 : Negative space is your friend 🔲

You might be tempted to fill every visible inch of your PowerPoint slide with images, diagrams, or just something to compensate for the very little time you have to present your 3MT.

Though, you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you did, because a little negative space can go a long way towards designing a great 3MT slide.

But what is negative space? Put simply, it’s the empty space around and between objects.

explaining negative space. the black plant is the main focal point, while the orange background represents negative space

Leaving some negative space in your slide gives the audience some breathing room and helps them focus on what’s important .

For photographs, this might mean choosing an image that has one focal point. This doesn’t necessarily mean the background needs to be plain, but it may simply be out of focus to allow the objects in the forefront to stand out.

For diagrams, this means leaving some empty space between sections so that there’s a clearer distinction between them, or reducing the number of sections entirely.

Here are some great examples of 3MT slides that use negative space to draw our attention to a particular person or object:

Baby crying

By leaving some negative space, our eyes are immediately drawn to one particular focal point, letting us focus on what’s important: You.

The take-home message 📝

And that brings us to the end of the second blog for our 3MT series!

The 3MT slide can truly make or break a 3MT presentation, but the right one can take it to the next level. And, by following these simple tips, you’re well on your way to designing a slide that captures your research in an effective and impactful way:

Avoid complex graphs and data

Keep it conceptual

Choose an eye-catching image or diagram, or make one

Keep text to a minimum, and

Don’t be afraid of negative space

So get creative! And remember, if you want to learn more about how to create amazing graphics, or how to up your public speaking skills, we’d love to show you how in our in-person science communication workshop s or online courses!

Contact us here to find out more. 🤩

Cintya Dharmayanti

Dr Tullio Rossi

academic presentation script example

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Hype Presentations

How we write presentation scripts that captivate audiences.

Having written thousands, this is our advice on how to write a presentation script and how to use scripts in your presentations.

What’s the most important factor in any presentation?

It’s got to be the design, right? Making your slides so beautiful, so chic, and so damn on-brand that your audience will weep at their magnificence?

That’s important, but no – we’re talking about something more fundamental than that.

Ok, then. How about the  animation ? Slick, professional and seamless. That premium, professional sheen that shows your quality through and through.

Again, really love your thinking here, but before that too.

Before you even open PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides. Before you get stuck into Photoshop, XD, or whatever design software you prefer.

In many cases, before you even fire your trusty PC or Mac up.

Which brings up back to answering that original question. The first – and most important – part of any presentation is the story. It’s the structure on which those other visual elements can hang, and with a great narrative, your design and animation can take it to another level of excellence.

But the story needs to be delivered. And in most cases, that’s down to you, the presenter. So you need a way to make sure you talk through the story in the right order. Hitting the right highs and lows. Without missing anything out. And without rambling on and going over your time limit.

What you need, my friend, is a presentation script.

The benefits of a great presentation script

OK, before we go any further, I can already see some of you grimacing at the thought of a presentation script.

I don’t need a script , you might be thinking – and you may well be right.

Scripts make presenters sound all robotic and boring , you could be muttering – and again, good point.

I want my  salespeople  to be able to think on their feet and adapt to any situation , you might be screaming into your screen. OK, chill out – you’re not wrong.

But let’s not be so black and white about things, eh?

Like presenters, presentations and audiences, each script should be different.

Your presentation script will likely be based on your experience as a presenter, your knowledge of the presentation subject, the level of detail you want to go into, the type of audience you’re presenting to, your time allowance, and many other variables.

So, it’s a good idea to start with the maximum amount you need, and then chip away as necessary. Think of it like Michelangelo’s David. To create his masterpiece, the Italian sculptor took a huge block of Tuscan marble, whittling it down for over two years to reveal the final result.

Can you imagine if he just took a small torso-shaped piece, and then glued a few bits and bobs on as he went along?

It’s the same for your presentation script: write it out in full, and see how it feels when you speak it out loud. What’s that? You probably wouldn’t speak it out loud? Well, you should – some phrases sound all wrong spoken aloud, even when they look fine on the page.

Speaking aloud also gives you a much better estimate of the time it will take to present it in full; reading it in your head, or even muttering it softly to yourself just won’t give you the same timings.

Each time you speak it aloud, it will get a bit tighter, a bit stronger and a bit more personalised to the way you speak.

And, after a few drafts, you’ll have something approaching your final presentation script. Just be careful to leave it when it’s ready – it can be tempting to tweak and tweak ad infinitum, and it’s sometimes difficult to know when to leave it alone.

Now it’s decision time. What will you do with this script? There are basically three choices here:

  • Read the full script.
  • Cut it down to bullet points.
  • Memorise it.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of each in turn.

1. Read the full script

This is the safest method.

You separate your script out throughout your slides in the speaker notes section. This means you see them on your laptop, but your audience doesn’t on the big screen (or their Zoom screen).

Most people new to presenting, nervous of public speaking, not experts in the subject matter, or just a bit cautious, might initially choose this option, but it’s not without risks.

Yes, you won’t forget anything and yes, it gives you something to focus on other than the audience, but that can become an issue.

If you stand in front of your audience with your eyes glued to PowerPoint’s speaker notes, then it’s often not the best experience for them. People like to connect with one another, and eye contact – even over video calls – is an important part of this. So, if you don’t even glance up from time to time, you and your presentation can come across as cold, at a time when you should be sharing emotion.

And another issue is it can be hard to portray that emotion when you’re reading out loud, rather than speaking from the top of your head. It can be a bit like listening to kids reading out loud in primary school: sure, they are saying all the words right, but the speed, the cadence, the emphasis and passion can all be lost.

So how can you get around this conundrum: you’re not confident enough to go without a presentation script, but you don’t want to sound like an emotionless reading drone. The answer, whether you like it or not, is to practice.

Most people don’t practice, so most presentations aren’t very good. Don’t be that guy.

The more you practice, the more comfortable you will feel delivering your presentation script. You’ll find that certain sentences and phrases slip off the tongue a bit easier, so you are able to make eye contact from time to time. Keep practicing and there may be whole slides or sections that you can talk around – maybe not word-for-word – but close enough.

And this is where you’re getting closer to that audience connection – in fact it’s arguably better to falter every now again – it proves you’re just human like the rest of us.

It also gets you closer to option 2.

2. Cut it down to bullet points

For most of our clients , who are pretty experienced presenters, this is the best option. It gives you the flexibility to talk around the main points, but with a safety net of all the key points written down as memory aids.

These bullets, tucked away in the speaker notes, can be a presenter’s secret weapon. With just a discreet glance towards their screen every now and again, they can make sure the whole story is delivered in full, in order, and with a healthy amount of audience connection thrown in too.

Don’t forget that speaker notes – whether a full presentation script or bullet points – are really easy to edit. So, if you tend to use a presentation multiple times, you can go in each time afterwards to tighten up a word or two here, or perhaps a couple more pointers there.

Or maybe edit them beforehand to personalise the script a bit to your specific audience – it’s a good way to mitigate on blanking the company or individual names you’re meeting.

It’s still important to practice with just speaker noters though, and you’ll find those glances become fewer and the eye contact increases as you do so. And the more you practice speaker notes, the better you’ll get, perhaps ultimately getting to option 3.

3. Memorise it

Let’s face it, the best presenters don’t need any kind of script. When was the last time you saw someone delivering a TED talk with a fistful of cue cards? Or referring back to their laptop every couple of minutes?

It’s all just there, in their heads, effortlessly transitioning through and out of their mouths. Or so it appears… again, don’t kill the messenger but these people practice over and over and over.

But memorising it doesn’t always mean literally reciting every exact word. That can be useful when you have a very strict time to work within, but the best presenters can flow in and out of their memorised script at will. It’s really something to behold.

This means they can slip in relevant stories or recent events seamlessly. Or can refer back to other talks that day, personalise their story to the audience and generally make it much more of a flexible experience.

But of course, there’s a flip side. Less experienced speakers might lose their place, miss a whole chunk out, or go off on a rambling tangent that has no relevance, like that time I went to do a talk and it was really early in the morning and usually I set my alarm for 6.45 except for Thursdays when I get a lie in but actually the Thursday before I had a meeting so I turned that alarm off, but left on the 8.30 alarm and this talk happened to start at 8.15 and I didn’t realise but the alarm was still on but the talk didn’t actually start on time because there was an issue with the pastry delivery because we usually use this one company but they couldn’t deliver them so we had to use another company which was actually run by the husband of a client we used to work with who used to be a designer but then realised that he preferred to actually bake and……… you get the point there I hope.

Your presentation script. Your way.

All in all, presentation scripts are essential in creating and presenting a great audience experience. They give you structure, flow, and confidence that simply reading off your slides, or ad-libbing it can’t.

Start with a strong presentation script, and remember that it’s entirely up to you to decide how to use it to make the most out of your own style.

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Starting a presentation in english: methods and examples.

  • By Jake Pool

academic presentation script example

If you’re going to make it in the professional world, most likely you’ll have to give a presentation in English at some point. No reason to get nervous!

Most of the work involved lies in the introduction. You may or may not need an English presentation PPT file, your topic, audience, or time limit may vary, but a strong opening is a must no matter what! Everything that follows can build from the opening outline you present to your audience.

Let’s look at some guidelines for starting a presentation in English. If you can master this part, you’ll never have to worry about the rest!

Opening in a Presentation in English

While it’s important to have your entire presentation organized and outlined, planning and organization are especially important in the introduction. This is what will guide you through a clear and concise beginning. Let’s look at how to start a presentation with well-organized thoughts .

Introduction Outline

  • Introduce yourself and welcome everyone.
  • State the purpose of your presentation
  • Give a short overview of the presentation

As we say, it’s as easy as 1-2-3. (No need for a more detailed English presentation script!) Let’s examine the first step.

1. Introduce Yourself & Welcome Everyone

The self-introduction is your opportunity to make a good first impression. Be sure to open with a warm welcome and use language that is familiar and natural. Based on your audience, there are a few different expressions you can use to start your presentation.

If you’re presenting to coworkers who may already know you:

  • Hello, [name] here. I would like to thank you all for your time. As you may know, I [describe what you do/your job title] I look forward to discussing [topic] today.
  • Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. Thank you for being here. For those who don’t know me, my name is [name], and for those who know me, hello again.

If you’re presenting to people you’ve never met:

  • Hello everyone, it’s nice to meet you all. My name is [name] and I am the [job/title].
  • Hello. Welcome to [event]. My name is [name] and I am the [job/title]. I’m glad you’re all here.

There are certainly more ways to make an introduction. However, it’s generally best to follow this format:

  • Start with a polite welcome and state your name.
  • Follow with your job title and/or the reason you’re qualified to speak on the topic being discussed.

2. State the Purpose of Your Presentation

Now that your audience knows who you are and your qualifications, you can state the purpose of your presentation. This is where you clarify to your audience what you’ll be talking about.

So, ask yourself, “ What do I want my audience to get from this presentation? ”

  • Do you want your audience to be informed?
  • Do you need something from your audience?
  • Do you want them to purchase a product?
  • Do you want them to do something for the community or your company?

With your goal in mind, you can create the next couple of lines of your presentation. Below are some examples of how to start.

  • Let me share with you…
  • I’d like to introduce you to [product or service]
  • Today I want to discuss…
  • I want to breakdown for you [topic]
  • Let’s discuss…
  • Today I will present the results of my research on [topic]
  • By the end of this presentation, you’ll understand [topic]
  • My goal is to explain…
  • As you know, we’ll be talking about…

When talking about the purpose of your presentation, stick to your goals. You purpose statement should be only one to three sentences. That way, you can give your audience a clear sense of purpose that sets them up for the rest of the presentation.

3. A Short Overview of the Presentation

The final step in starting your presentation is to give a short outline of what you’ll be presenting. People like a map of what to expect from a presentation.

It helps them organize their thoughts and gives a sense of order. Also, it lets the audience know why they’re listening to you. This is what you’ll use to grab their attention, and help them stay focused throughout the presentation.

Here are some examples of how you can outline your presentation:

  • Today, I’m going to cover… Then we’ll talk about… Lastly, I’ll close on…
  • We’re going to be covering some key information you need to know, including…
  • My aim with this presentation is to get you to… To do that we’ll be talking about…
  • I’ve divided my presentation into [number] sections… [List the sections]
  • Over the next [length of your presentation] I’m going to discuss…

That’s it! It’s as simple as 1-2-3. If you have a fear of public speaking or are not confident about presenting to a group of people, follow these three steps. It’s a simple structure that can get you off to a good start. With that in mind, there are other ways to bring your introduction to the next level too! Read on for bonus tips on how to really engage your audience, beyond the basics.

For a Strong Presentation in English, Engage your Audience

Presentations aren’t everyone’s strongest ability, and that’s OK. If you’re newer to presenting in English, the steps above are the basics to getting started. Once you’re more comfortable with presenting, though, you can go a step further with some extra tricks that can really wow your audience.

Mastering the skill of engaging an audience will take experience. Fortunately, there are many famous speakers out there you can model for capturing attention. Also, there are some common techniques that English-speakers use to gain an audience’s attention.

*How and when you use these techniques in your introduction is at your discretion, as long as you cover the 3 steps of the introduction outline that we discussed earlier.*

Do or say something shocking.

The purpose of shocking your audience is to immediately engage them. You can make a loud noise and somehow relate the noise to your presentation. Or, you can say, “ Did you know that… ” and follow with a shocking story or statistic. Either way, the objective is to create surprise to draw their attention.

Tell a story

Telling a story related to your presentation is a great way to get the audience listening to you.

You can start by saying, “ On my way to [location] the other day… ” or “ On my way here, I was reminded of… ” and then follow with a story. A good story can make your presentation memorable.

Ask your audience to take part

Sometimes a good introduction that captures attention will involve asking for help from the audience. You can ask the audience to play a quick game or solve a puzzle that’s related to your presentation. Also, you could engage the audience with a group exercise. This is a great way to get people involved in your presentation.

There are many more ways to engage the audience, so get creative and see what you can think up! Here are some resources that will help you get started.

Also, if you want to get better at public speaking (and help your English speaking too!), a great organization to know about is the Toastmasters . The organization is dedicated to helping you be a better speaker, and there are many local groups in America. They offer free lessons and events to help you master your English speaking, and also offer additional help to paying members.

The Takeaway

A presentation in English? No problem, as long as your introduction sets you up for success . Admittedly, this can be easier said than done. Native speakers and non-native speakers alike sometimes struggle with getting a good start on their English presentation. But the advice above can help you get the confidence you need to lay a good foundation for your next speech !

Jake Pool

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10 Elementary School Presentation Script Examples

Welcome to our special resource dedicated to Elementary School Presentation Scripts.

As teachers, we know the immense value of presentations in developing our students’ confidence, creativity, and communication skills.

In this collection, we aim to provide you with a variety of script examples across diverse topics tailored for young learners.

These scripts are more than just guidelines; they’re stepping stones for our students to express themselves, explore new ideas, and learn to communicate effectively in a supportive environment.

Each Section provides a link to a page with Script examples you can use and download as you need – remember to adapt them for your teaching environment!

Let’s embark on this journey together, nurturing the budding speakers, thinkers, and leaders in our classrooms!

Elementary School Presentation Script Examples

Elementary School Presentation Scripts and Topics

you can use the links below if you are looking for something in particular. Or check out the examples in the article.

  • Presentation skills for kids
  • Book Report Script Examples
  • News Report Script Examples
  • Weather Report Script Examples
Science Report Script Examples
  • Festival Report Presentation Examples

Dream Job Presentation Examples

  • Environment Report Presentation Scripts
  • My Community Presentation Scripts
  • A Place I Would Like to Visit Presentation Scripts
  • My Family Presentation Scripts

Favorite Book Report :

Students can choose a book they love, talk about the story, and explain why it’s their favorite. It encourages reading and comprehension skills.

Book report presentations are a fantastic way for elementary students to develop both their analytical skills and their ability to communicate their thoughts and feelings about what they’ve read.

In a book report presentation, students summarize the plot, discuss characters, and express their personal opinions about the book.

This type of presentation encourages critical thinking and helps students articulate their viewpoints in a structured manner.

Book report Script Example

Introduce Yourself: “ Hello, my name is [Student’s Name], and today I’m presenting on ‘Matilda’ by Roald Dahl.

What is the book about: “ This book is about a brilliant and kind-hearted girl, Matilda, who loves reading. She faces many challenges, mainly because of her mean parents and the terrifying school principal, Miss Trunchbull. “

Best Part: “ My favorite part is when Matilda discovers her magical powers and uses them to stand up to Miss Trunchbull . “

What does the book teacher us?: “ I think this book teaches us about the importance of kindness and standing up for what’s right. “

Do you Recommend this book?: “ I recommend ‘Matilda’ to anyone who loves stories about courage and friendship.”

Book Report Script and Presentation Examples.

You can check out more examples and editable Book Report Scripts on our dedicated page linked here and above

national News Script Samples

News Report Scripts

News report presentations in elementary school offer students a unique opportunity to explore current events and practice journalistic skills.

In these presentations, students learn how to gather information, summarize key points, and present news in an informative and engaging manner.

This type of presentation is crucial for developing research skills, understanding the world, and learning how to communicate effectively.

News Report Script Example

“Good morning, I’m [Student’s Name] with today’s news update. Our main story is the local library’s book donation drive.

The drive aims to collect books for children in need. Community members are encouraged to donate books in good condition.

The library manager, Ms. Johnson, says, ‘We hope to foster a love of reading and provide access to books for all children.’

In other news, the weather forecast predicts sunny skies this weekend, perfect for outdoor activities.

Lastly, our school’s annual science fair is next week, showcasing students’ innovative projects. That’s all for today’s news, thank you for tuning in!”

News Script Samples For Students.

You can check out more examples and editable News report Scripts on our dedicated page linked here and above

weather report News Script Samples

Weather Report Scripts

Weather report presentations are an engaging way for elementary students to learn about meteorology and develop presentation skills.

In these reports, students describe current weather conditions, forecast future weather, and explain meteorological phenomena.

This exercise enhances their understanding of science and helps them practice clear and concise communication.

Weather Report Script Example:

“Good morning, I’m [Student’s Name], and here’s your weather report. Today, we’re expecting partly cloudy skies with a high of 75 degrees. Perfect weather for playing outside! “

“Did you know that clouds are made of tiny water droplets? Tonight, the temperature will drop to around 50 degrees, so you might need a jacket. “

“This weekend, bring your umbrellas because there’s a chance of rain. Remember, whether it’s sunny or rainy, every type of weather is important for our environment. “

Weather Script Forecast and Report Examples for Students

For more detailed scripts and fun weather facts, check out our full page and downloadable examples on our website.

Science Report Script Examples

Science Report Script

Science report presentations allow elementary students to explore and share scientific concepts and discoveries.

Through these presentations, students research a scientific topic, conduct experiments, and present their findings.

This process fosters critical thinking, enhances research skills, and encourages curiosity about the natural world.

Science Report Script Example:

“Hello everyone, I’m [Student’s Name] with a science report on plant growth. Did you know plants need sunlight, water, and air to grow?

I conducted an experiment by growing beans in different conditions. One plant didn’t get enough light, and it didn’t grow as tall as the others.

This shows how important sunlight is for plant health.”

If you’re curious about more scientific experiments and discoveries, visit our full-page resources.

We also have downloadable examples of science reports that you can use to create your own exciting presentations.”

Dream Job Presentation Script Examples

Dream Job Presentation Scripts

My Dream Job : Encouraging children to think about their future aspirations and what they would like to do when they grow up.

Dream job presentations inspire elementary students to explore various careers and envision their future aspirations.

Students research a profession, discuss the responsibilities, and explain why they are interested in that career.

This activity encourages goal setting and self-reflection.

“Hello! My name is [Student’s Name], and my dream job is to be a veterinarian.

Vets help take care of animals and make sure they are healthy. I love animals, and I want to help them, just like my dog when he was sick.

Veterinarians need to be good at science and really caring. “

Dream Job Presentation Script Examples for Students

You can check out more examples and editable Dream job presentation Scripts on our dedicated page linked here and above

festival presentation scripts for students

Festival Report Presentation Script Examples

Festival report presentations provide a platform for elementary students to learn about and share different cultural festivals.

Students research a festival, explain its significance, and discuss how it is celebrated.

This enhances their understanding of global cultures and helps them develop respect and appreciation for diversity.

Festival Report Script Example:

“Hi, I’m [Student’s Name], and I’ll be talking about Diwali, the Festival of Lights celebrated in India.

Diwali signifies the victory of light over darkness. People decorate their homes with lights and candles, and there are lots of fireworks!

They also exchange gifts and sweets. I love learning about Diwali because it shows how light and goodness can overcome any obstacle.

Festival and Holidays Report Presentation Script for Students.

We also have downloadable examples of festival reports that can help you create an engaging presentation on a festival of your choice.”

Environment Report Presentation Script Examples

Environment Report Presentation Script Examples

Environment report presentations are a crucial way for elementary students to learn about and discuss environmental issues.

In these presentations, students explore topics like conservation, pollution, and sustainability, helping them understand their role in protecting the planet.

Environment Report Script Example:

“Good day, everyone. I’m [Student’s Name], and today’s environment report is on recycling.

Recycling helps reduce waste and saves natural resources. For example, recycling paper saves trees, and recycling plastic helps protect oceans from pollution.

I started recycling at home, and it’s easy! We can all make a difference in keeping our planet clean.

Environment Presentation Script Examples for Students

We also have downloadable examples of environment reports that you can use to create your own presentation on how to protect our Earth.”

https://makingenglishfun.com/2023/11/29/my-community-presentation-script-examples-for-students/

My Community Presentation Examples

My Community presentations encourage elementary students to explore and appreciate their local community.

These presentations can cover local landmarks, community services, or notable events, helping students develop a sense of connection and pride in their community.

My Community Script Example:

“Hi, I’m [Student’s Name], and I’m here to talk about my community. I live in [City/Town], which is known for its beautiful [Park/Landmark].

We also have a community center where people can take classes and play sports.

Last month, our community held a clean-up day at the park, and it was a lot of fun!

Community events like this help us all come together and make our town a better place.

My Community Presentation Script Examples for Students

Want to know more about community projects or how to talk about your community? Visit our full page for more details and downloadable examples

academic presentation script example

My Family Presentation Examples

My Family Tree : This topic allows children to explore their family history and share it with their classmates, fostering a sense of identity and heritage.

My Family presentations allow elementary students to share stories and information about their family heritage and traditions.

This helps students understand their background and fosters a sense of identity and belonging.

My Family Presentation Script :

“Hello! My name is [Student’s Name], and I’m excited to tell you about my family.

We come from [Country/Region], and we have some cool traditions, like [Tradition]. Every year, we gather to celebrate [Holiday/Festival], which is special to us.

My family also loves to cook [Traditional Dish], and it’s delicious! Talking about my family makes me proud of where I come from.

If you’re interested in learning how to create your own family presentation, check out our full page.

My Family: Class Presentation Script Examples

We’ve got great resources and downloadable examples to help you share your family’s unique story.”

academic presentation script example

Place I Would Love to Visit Examples

A Place I Would Love to Visit : Students can research and present about a place they dream of visiting, discussing the culture, landmarks, and why it fascinates them.

“Place I Would Love to Visit” presentations inspire elementary students to explore and dream about different destinations around the world.

This topic encourages students to research a specific location, learn about its culture, geography, and landmarks, and express why they find it appealing.

It’s an excellent way for students to broaden their horizons and practice their research and presentation skills.

Place I Would Love to Visit Script

“Hi, my name is [Student’s Name], and the place I would love to visit is Paris, France.

Paris is known as the ‘City of Lights’ and it’s famous for the Eiffel Tower. I want to see the Eiffel Tower at night when it’s all lit up.

Paris is also famous for its delicious food, like croissants and macarons, which I’d love to try. Another reason I want to visit Paris is to see the beautiful art in the Louvre Museum.”

A Place I Would Like to Visit Scripts for Students

You can check out more scripts for travel and places to visit on the link and on the image above. We also have downloadable and printable scripts for you.

18 Presentation Tips for Kids

Each subject area, from the wonders of the environment to the intimate narratives of family life, offers unique opportunities for young learners to engage, learn, and grow.

We’ve traveled through the realms of book reviews, delved into the dynamics of news and weather reporting, unraveled the mysteries of science, celebrated diverse global festivals, and dreamt about future careers.

Our exploration of community life highlighted the importance of local engagement, while the scripts on dream destinations ignited wanderlust and curiosity about the world.

We encourage you to use these as starting points, adapting and expanding upon them to suit the unique voices and experiences of your young presenters.

Further Reading

  • https://learningmole.com/presentation-skills-for-kids/
  • https://www.duarte.com/tips-for-kids-to-nail-presentations/
  • https://www.planetspark.in/blogs/7-ways-to-improve-presentations-skills-for-kids-with-best-online-training-at-planetspark

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academic presentation script example

I have been a teacher of English for over 15 years, in that time i made hundreds and thousands of resources and learnt so much i think its worth sharing. Hopefully to help teachers and parents around the world.

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EXAMPLE PRESENTATION SCRIPT

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KEVIN RENKEN

This paper presents preliminary experimental results on the measurement of the air permeability coefficient in a concrete sample that has been subjected to constant pressure differences of 5 and 10 Pa (3.45 x 10&#39;~ - 6.90 x 1u2 psi). This experimental model simulates indoor radon gas entry by advection. A reliable air permeability system was designed to perform laboratory measurements on concrete samples under controlled conditions. The experimental setup. consisted of a PC-data acquisition and control system, proportional needle valves, highly accurate pressure transducers, and a commercial visual programming language software package. The concrete sample tested was approximately 4&quot; in length. 3.5&quot; in diameter, and of standard 1:2:4 (cement:sand:pea gravel) composition with a water-to-cement ratio of 0.5. A comparison between past and present air permeability coefficient results is presented. Details of the innovative experimental setup and procedures are described.

The Astronomical …

Stephen Strom

ACS Applied Materials &amp; Interfaces

jack swallow

The Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics

Silvana Mattedi

Frontiers in Psychology

Louise Taylor

Social-psychological dimensions of learning are under-researched, but they affect student achievement. Within a marketized higher education context in England, United Kingdom, this study examined whether the relation between students’ social identities as members of their discipline and academic achievement could be further understood by considering the mediating roles of approaches to learning and frequency of making course complaints. Undergraduates (N = 679) completed a questionnaire to assess these constructs. As expected, approaches to learning and course complaining both acted as serial mediators of the link between discipline identification and academic achievement: stronger discipline identification was related to more deep approaches to learning, less complaining, and higher achievement, whereas weaker discipline identification was related to more surface approaches to learning, more complaining, and lower achievement. The findings suggest that addressing these social-psych...

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IMAGES

  1. Script For Perfect Presentation

    academic presentation script example

  2. DEMO Script Examples for Presentation

    academic presentation script example

  3. Presentation script

    academic presentation script example

  4. Script For Perfect Presentation

    academic presentation script example

  5. Oral Presentation Script

    academic presentation script example

  6. Presentation Script

    academic presentation script example

VIDEO

  1. Writing a script to focus your video presentation

  2. Countdown Script Example

  3. Apps Script Crash Course

  4. How to Give an Academic Presentation

  5. How to PRESENT your research: 11 TIPS for presentation day with an EXAMPLE

  6. How to write the Methodology section of an Academic research paper IN 4 STEPS

COMMENTS

  1. How to Write a Presentation Script

    The #1 reason you should have a script and practice it isn't so you have a smooth delivery—it's so your presentation is organized, comprehensive, and easy to follow. 💡. Okay. Time to finally reveal my unique approach to scripting and practicing your presentation! 4.

  2. How to write an engaging and effective presentation script?

    Crafting an engaging presentation script is a multifaceted process that requires attention to detail, a deep understanding of your subject, and a keen sense of audience engagement. Here are some crucial strategies that you should know: 1. In-depth research. To lay a solid foundation for your presentation, start with comprehensive research.

  3. How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

    Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling. Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story.

  4. Presentation Script

    An excellent presentation script brings structure and clarity to your message. It keeps your audience engaged and helps them understand your ideas. It also ensures consistency and repeatability, especially when presenting multiple times. A good script for presentation provides adaptability and preparedness, enabling you to adjust and handle ...

  5. How to Script & Practice your Academic Presentation

    FREE TRAINING: https://bit.ly/mtp-script-and-practice-freetraining"Should I write a script for my presentation?" is one of the most common questions I see on...

  6. Presentation Skills

    Basic outline / structure. Introduction: introduce the topic, some basic background, thesis (your stance or argument). Outline: provide basic bullet points on the key parts of the presentation. Main body: divide the main body into sections. Evaluation: always include evaluation. This can be a separate section or part of the main body. Conclusion: summarise key points, restate the thesis and ...

  7. PDF Getting your point across. An academic guide to giving presentations

    An academic guide to giving presentations 2 A good talk involves careful planning and preparation. This resource helps you to understand what ... For example, what proportion of the mark will be given for the style and delivery of your talk, and what ... from a script will result in poor marks for the 'communication skills' aspect of any ...

  8. 6 Tips For Giving a Fabulous Academic Presentation

    Tip #4: Practice. Practice. Practice. You should always practice your presentation in full before you deliver it. You might feel silly delivering your presentation to your cat or your toddler, but you need to do it and do it again. You need to practice to ensure that your presentation fits within the time parameters.

  9. Ten smart ways to ace your next academic presentation

    Here are 10 tips to keep in mind to ensure your presentation hits the mark. 1. Any time you put something on your slides, its primary purpose is to help the audience, not you. Many presenters will add copious text or other elements to help themselves remember points they want to make. However, this is usually less helpful for the audience (most ...

  10. Giving an Academic Presentation in English

    Giving an Academic Presentation in English ... Each chapter covers either a particular skill (e.g. preparing a script, pronunciation, visuals, how to begin and end a presentation) or the particular purpose of a specific moment in a presentation. For example, the final slide is designed not just to conclude and thank the audience, but is an ...

  11. How To Write A Presentation 101

    6/ Engage Emotionally. Connect emotional levels with your audience by appealing to their aspirations, fears, desires, or values. They help create a deeper connection and engagement from the very beginning. Make sure your introduction is concise and to the point. Avoid unnecessary details or lengthy explanations.

  12. 10 tips for delivering an academic presentation with impact

    For example, your presentation starting words may focus on the research question or exciting results you obtained in your research, even before introducing yourself. ... You can develop your cue cards based on your presentation script outline. Academic presentation tip #9: Practice before presenting to keep your anxiety under control ...

  13. PDF Creating and Presenting a Poster Script

    Power Point, InDesign, and Adobe Spark are some of the options. Some software like Adobe Spark come with built-in templates that you can use to create an effective poster. There are also several free templates available online that you can download and use to create your poster. Video 4: Presenting your poster.

  14. PDF Oral Presentations

    Introduction - Examples should include the topic of the presentation, why it is important for the audience to learn about it, a brief outline of the presentation's major points, and possibly a greeting and/or introduction. Specific introduction examples showing a presentation starting with: An interesting/amazing fact An engaging story

  15. How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples

    This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there. Follow these steps: Signal that it's nearly the end of your presentation, for example, "As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…". Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation - "In this speech I wanted to compare…". 5.

  16. Structure

    This MSWord document is a template for structuring a typical academic presentation, it can be adapted and changed if necessary depending on how long the presentation you need to give is. Try to fill it in using full sentences as these will become your slide titles. The blue sections are optional.

  17. How to design an impactful 3MT slide (with examples!)

    Tip #3: Choose an eye-catching visual… or make one 👀. In the same way that 'the hook' in your 3MT script helps to pique the audience's attention, the slide is another important tool to capture their attention and keep them engaged. But to do this, it needs to be eye-catching and interesting.

  18. How we write presentation scripts

    Let's look at the pros and cons of each in turn. 1. Read the full script. This is the safest method. You separate your script out throughout your slides in the speaker notes section. This means you see them on your laptop, but your audience doesn't on the big screen (or their Zoom screen).

  19. Starting a Presentation in English: Methods and Examples

    Start with a polite welcome and state your name. Follow with your job title and/or the reason you're qualified to speak on the topic being discussed. 2. State the Purpose of Your Presentation. Now that your audience knows who you are and your qualifications, you can state the purpose of your presentation.

  20. Giving an Academic Presentation

    ☛ For English subtitles, click on subtitles/closed captions.Need more help with your English? How can the ELC help YOU!☛ Check out the ELC: https://www.polyu...

  21. Presentation script examples

    5. Tell a story with your presentation script. Relate how the product or brand started and where the idea originated. Example: " I started this company as a broke college student with a dream. Today, that dream has become a team of 500 in national offices. 6. Use humor and personal anecdotes.

  22. 10 Elementary School Presentation Script Examples

    This type of presentation is crucial for developing research skills, understanding the world, and learning how to communicate effectively. News Report Script Example. "Good morning, I'm [Student's Name] with today's news update. Our main story is the local library's book donation drive.

  23. (PDF) EXAMPLE PRESENTATION SCRIPT

    EXAMPLE PRESENTATION SCRIPT The following is an example script for the Are You Credit Wise? presentation. (Slide 1) Hi, my name is _____ and I'm a Junior studying _____. I'm here today to talk about smart money management. I'm sure it's everyone's favorite discussion topic. But, we promise over the next 30 minutes you will learn a lot ...