When You Don't Understand The Question After Your Presentation In English

You’ve prepared your presentation. You know what you want to say and you’ve practiced

and you’re ready to present.

But one thing still scares you.

The questions

AFTER the presentation.

What do you do if you can’t understand the person asking the question?

I’m Christina and you’re watching Speak Better, Feel Great TV.

The place to boost your English and boost your career.

In this video, you’re gonna learn exactly what to do

when you don’t understand a question after your presentation.

Ya ready?

and so that brings me to the end of my presentation. , Are there any questions?

Yes, you sir?

Yeah, I was just wonderin’ how your process deals with multinational testing scenarios

When it happens, you just want to disappear!

But you can’t. You have to manage.

One classic technique:

Reformulate the question, then check that your reformulation is correct.

Of course, this means that you need to understand at least

part of the question.

If you understood something,

anything.

introduce your reformulation with:

Or an alternative version

But what if after that, you still don’t understand?

You run away and hide in the restroom!

Correction:

you wish you could run and hide,

but

you can’t.

You have to manage the situation as best you can.

If you’re presenting with a partner, you can pass the question to them.

How? By saying:

Just be prepared for Eric to take his revenge the next time you present together!

Another possibility,

admit that it is difficult for you to understand.

It’s ok.

This sort of thing also happens all the time between native speakers.

Maybe the person asking the question is not very clear.

If you’re really stuck, just

ask the person to email their question to you.

This way, you can be sure to understand,

and you can have time to think about how to formulate your response.

For this, you can say:

Or you can use a technique that an American friend of mine once used when she was in a conference:

You said that the test results were incomplete and so the data here could prove to be inaccurate in the long run.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait and do a thorough test to have results that are sure to be relevant?

That's an excellent question, I totally agree with. Thank you. Next question!"

Nah, don't use that technique

Go back and study the other techniques.

And what about you?

What do you do to manage the question and answers at the end of your presentations?

Share your tips with us in the comments below.

I’m curious to know what you do.

And remember

joining The Speak Better, Feel Great Community is a great way to improve your English so you can understand

ALL of the questions

at the end of your presentations.

Sign up at christinarebuffet.com

and you’ll get bonus resources to help you boost your English

and boost your career.

I’m Christina, from Speak Better, Feel Great TV.

See ya next time!