Signposting in presentations
- 1. Starting Good morning/afternoon/evening (everyone, ladies and gentlemen, colleagues) Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here today. I am honored to have the opportunity to share our research with you here today. I am happy to have this chance to speak to you (all) today about... Introducing topic Today I’m going to talk about... As you can see, I’m here today to talk to you about... Explaining structure (Especially important if the structure of your talk is a little different from normal, or you have a very long presentation with many parts). I’ve divided my presentation into two/three/four/several parts. First, I’ll explain XXX and then I’ll move onto talk about... Showing respect for listener’s knowledge As you may know, As you can see, As you may be aware, I know many of you are familiar with... Many of you may have performed... I am sure, you are all familiar with X’s work on Presentation Signpost Expressions Moving from section to section So let me start by... explaining the background So I’ll start with... Right, so first... Well moving onto... Next I’ll talk about... Right, was that clear? So I’ll move onto... Well, what does this all mean? So what is the significance of this? Let’s take a moment to look at a few other reports... So what have other people said about this? OK, so what’s next... Right, I’ll introduce/share our materials and methods. So finally, That brings us to my last point. Looking at visuals Now let’s look at... May I focus your attention on the table / chart/ figure You’ll notice that... OK so you can see a summary of our results here... Pls focus on the second row / the post operative findings in patient 2
- 2. Underlining points: Please remember that... It’s important to remember that... This is important/significant because... You’re probably thinking that... and you’re right / but this would be a mistake... Please notice that... Note this point: Referring backwards and forwards You’ll remember I said... Just to repeat what I said earlier, As I mentioned earlier... Do you remember I said...? I’ll talk more about this later. Don’t worry if this isn’t so clear now, I’ll explain the details later... More on this later on. The details will come later. Can I come back to this point? Referring to study weaknesses You may be able to see the weaknesses in our study. Of course our study cannot conclusively say that... We need to look at X in more detail and a further study with Y might confirm our findings. Summarizing OK, so in summary... So where does this leave us? Well we need to: We can agree that... Our main point is that: We have raised the following questions: Our study has proved that: We believe our study presents conclusive proof that... We believe our study raises many questions about... We believe our study may be the first step in... Finishing up: I hope my rather rapid explanation was clear. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for listening. Well that’s all from me today. It’s been a great pleasure to share this with you today. Thank you very much. Starting question-time ’ll be happy to answer questions... If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. Does anyone have any questions? OK, so question time! Anyone...? Unfortunately we seem to have run out of time. If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to try to answer them privately.../ you can see my email address here... Responding to tricky questions Thank you... it’s a good question and one we are trying to address in our follow up studies. Ah yes. That occurred to us too. We tried to account for it by... I’m afraid I have no idea! Perhaps we can look at that in more detail in a follow up study. Do you have any suggestions? Let me check I understand you clearly. Do you mean...? So do you mean...? So are you saying...? Could you repeat that? I didn’t quite catch that... I’m not sure I’m following you... I’m afraid my English is failing me. Ah... I’m afraid I don’t have that information with me now. If I can get your email address after this session, I’ll mail it to you.