Language of Presentations: Style and Typical Constructions

1. Style: communication instead of performing

Your presentation will be most effective if you use the same everyday language in which you explain things to a fellow student in the lab. There is absolutely no need to use a more formal language. In fact, formal language is not desirable at all as it is more difficult to understand for the audience. Do not try to impress the audience with fancy words, formal constructions, subject-specific jargon, or unnecessary abbreviations. Think about oral presentations in terms of communication and do not see it as the performance of a literary play. The audience will be grateful if you are easy to follow.

INTRODUCTION How you begin your presentation depends on how formal the situation is.

Most audiences prefer a relatively informal approach. Compare the two variants with different degree of formality. Which one do you prefer?

FAIRLY FORMAL	MORE FRIENDLY
Perhaps we should begin.	OK, let’s get started.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.	Morning , everyone
On behalf of … may I welcome you to …	Thanks for coming.
My name is…	I’m …
For those of you who do not know me already, …	As you know, …
I am responsible for …	I am in charge of …
This morning I would like to … (discuss, report on, present)	What I want to do this morning is … (talk to you about…, tell you about…, show you … )
If you have any questions you would like to ask, I will be happy to answer them.	Feel free to ask any questions you like as we go along.
Perhaps we can leave any questions you may have until the end of the presentation.	And don’t worry, there will be plenty of time left over for questions at the end.

The most common stylistic mistakes in oral presentations that derive from written scientific style are:

1. Predominance of passive voice

Can be easily changed to active voice. Here it is absolutely appropriate to use pronouns “I” and “we”, which are considered incorrect in written articles. Remember that presentation is a special oral genre with its own characteristic linguistic features.

e.g. In my presentation different simulation tools will be compared. – In my presentation I will compare different simulation tools.

2. Long attributive groups

These are difficult to perceive for the audience. Moreover, they may even hinder understanding through establishing wrong connections between words. There are several solutions:

1. verbs or gerunds instead of nouns

e.g. To perform geological model calculation, we use the following methods. – To calculate the geological model, we use the following methods.

2. “of-constructions”

e.g. the geological model construction process – the process of constructing the geological model

3. another preposition

e.g. We are going to discuss influence estimation criteria development. – We are going to discuss the development of criteria for influence estimation.

Ex. 10. Review the following passage, identify stylistic mistakes and correct them. There are also two mistakes in spelling.

Good morning, ladies and gentleman. My name is Stephen Brown. The project topic is “Sedimentological analysis and Neural Network application to the field Z reservoirs facial and petrophysical modeling”.

In the presentation Z oil field facial and geological models will be observed in details.

First of all the results of detailed sedimentological analysis will be viewed. Then the problem of the Artificial Neural Network application to the facies determination in the uncored wells will be examined.

Finally the details of the facies building will be presented. The work's following step is in the building of the petrophysical model. For that the main petrophysical parameters should be estimated.

And after all the model will be verified by model based and well testing based horizontal permeabilities comparison and suggestions for further work will be made.

Ex. 11. Read through the following sets of phrases used to make a presentation. Make sure you understand their meaning.