How to give a strong presentation: tips & key phrases

Good morning, good day, good afternoon, good evening,

whatever time of day it is, I hope you're well.

Thank you for coming to engVid, and learning to become better at English,

the very best place to find on the website for this. My name is Benjamin. Today, we are

going to be doing a short lesson on useful vocabulary for making a presentation. So it's

going to be useful for college students when you have to make a presentation in class,

and also for those of you who are studying business English. So we are going to be looking

at how to begin a presentation, how to present ideas, how to... Useful words for putting

your ideas across. Lovely.

So, a good way to start, at the beginning. We could say: "To begin with", or:

"To start off", okay? So:

"I'd like to begin by thanking you all for coming today." Okay? "I'd like",

obviously short for: "I would like to begin", the infinitive "by"... "I'd like to begin by",

and then you list the reasons or what it is you want to start with. Okay.

Another use of "begin with" or "by":

"It was a great start to the year, beginning with the press conference in Japan",

for example. Yeah? "It was a great start to the year",

and then "beginning with" with "ing". Just the spelling when you are going to use "ing",

you need to add that extra "n". "Beginning with". So: "begin with" or "by". It kind of

also works with "start off". So:

"I'd like to start off by thanking you for coming to engVid today."

Okay? Or:

"I'd like to start off by thanking you".

"Start off with", "start off by", "begin with", "begin by",

great ways for starting a presentation.

The next phrase I want to come on to: "base on". Now, "base" as a verb, it has two different

functions. Okay? It can be the reason for a decision, or it can be to do with place.

Okay? So... If I'm using it in the past, I would say:

"This was a decision based on",

it's the reason for decision. So, you came to engVid today based on your desire to become

better at English. So: "I base", so I... My reason for the decision, I base this on my

understanding of the website. Okay?

Now, when I'm talking about place, we talk about basing yourself at. So:

"This company is based in London", or:

"This company is based in Germany",

or if you're going to talk about the future:

"We will base ourselves in the United States" or:

"We will be basing ourselves in Montreal or in Russia." Okay?

"To base yourself" and the reason for a decision.

Okay so far? I hope so. Going to do a quiz at the end so if you... You can try out these

phrases, and then I'll give you a bit of feedback on the quiz.

Now, if I'm doing a presentation and I want you to do something, I might say:

"I'd like you to come up with some ideas.",

"I'd like you to come up with some reasons."

Okay? So I'll put: "ideas".

Let's just work on the pronunciation, make sure you've got that right.

"I'd like you to come", "I'd like you to come up with",

"I'd like you to come up with some ideas."

And then you can ask them to do it with the person sitting next to them, whatever.

Okay?

Now, this is quite a difficult phrase: "deal with". Okay? It... It basically means to have

an answer to. So:

"We need to deal with foreign competitors."

This is a very difficult word to spell: "foreign", okay?

It's "eiga", "gn", sorry. So:

"We need to deal with foreign competitors."

Here are the foreign competitors, they're saying things, and we need to have an idea.

We need to have a good idea, we need to do something in return. We need to enter the

fight, almost. Okay? "To deal with". So, I am dealing with... You can ask it as a question:

"Are you dealing with that?" If you're the manager and you're talking to someone in your company:

"Are you dealing with that portfolio?"

or whatever it is. Right?

Now, "move on". This is a good way, if you're doing a speech, to move on to the next chapter.

Okay? So I have my beginning, come... I'm getting them to come up with ideas. I'm telling

them to deal with something. And now, this is just a way of going on to the next chapter,

so I'd say: "Moving on to our company's progress in Hong Kong." Okay? So, "moving on", now

let's look at. Or: "I'd like to move on to...", "I would like to", "I would like to move on to".

Now, I'd like to move on to our next guest speaker, so I'm just going to go next

door and see if he's ready for us. One sec.

That's very strange, the guest speaker, he wasn't there, so terribly sorry, but I have

to finish it myself. Sorry about that. Now, there's one other kind of word I wanted to

draw your attention to. We've got: "refer to". Basically means "look at". Okay? "Refer to".

So, all these people, they're sitting with their little booklets about my talk,

I say to them: "Please refer to page 21", or:

"Refer to page 34 if you want more information."

Okay? Another use of "refer": If a person in my company gives me serious problems, they're

really rude to me, I say to them:

"Okay, that's fine. I'll be referring that to your senior manager."

Okay? "Referring to", it means going to someone else, almost looking to someone

else for an answer.

Great, so that just puts us in time for our conclusion. To wrap up a speech, you conclude.

So we start with, start by, now we conclude. So, to conclude today's presentation,

I'd like you to think about doing the quiz on www.engvid.com.

Today we did... Well, how

to start, we did "refer to", we said to "come up with", all these really useful words that

I hope you're going to be remembering. You could say: "To conclude by..."

I will conclude today's lesson by asking you to take the quiz and to possibly

subscribe to my YouTube video

if you want more lessons. So: "conclude" we can also use as a noun. My conclusion:

Keep learning English, have fun with it. Get a dictionary, keep on learning your words,

talk to people as much as you can. We got like over 600 videos more, thousands of videos

on this website. Get involved with it. I really hope you enjoy learning English, and

thanks for watching today's lesson.

Okay, bye.