14*. Transitions in a group presentation (combination of one speaker’s summary and another speaker’s preview) – should provide natural and logical flow of ideas.

That’s all I want to say about Production technology and now I would like to give the floor to Daniel, who will discuss some environmental impacts of oil production in our field development project.

- So, we have seen that the geological features of Field M are rather peculiar. Therefore, formation evaluation becomes extremely important. This part will be explored by the next speaker, Michael, to whom I give the floor.

- Thank you, John. Indeed, my part is the logical continuation of the previous ideas. First of all, we must speak about …

Ex. 15. Listen to two excerpts from the main body of the presentations and fill in the gaps with the phrases that you hear. You will hear the recording twice.

“(1) __________, you can see that our sales topped 50 million the year before last. Then last year sales dropped to 40 million, with a slight recovery at the end of the financial year. However, this year sales have continued to drop to an all time low of 30 million. (2) __________ our market share. (3) __________, we have 25% of the market share, 10% down on last year.”

“(4) __________ how important internal communications are is shown by some findings from research that we have recently undertaken. Good communications is a very key factor in staff motivation. (5) __________ , you will see how important it is to get the basics in place. You need to identify your communication requirement, agree your objectives and success criteria, identify your target audiences, define the content of your message and determine the style of delivery. (6) __________ the communication process is when all those basics fall into place naturally.”

Effective Vocal Techniques

The speaker’s voice is a powerful tool capable of producing a strong effect on the audience.

1. Articulation / Word Stress

1. Make sure you know how to say any long or technical words you may need.

In English some parts of a word sound weak, some strong and some very strong.

e.g. presenTAtion producTIvity deFIciency faCIlity

It is particularly important to know which part of the word has the strongest stress. Bad stress is more likely to make you difficult to understand than bad pronunciation.

Ex. 16. Pronounce the following words with clear primary and secondary word stress.

1. investigation

2. objective

3. consequences

4. implications

5. observations

6. hypothesis

7. perspective

8. correlation

9. similarity

10. variation

11. peculiarity

12. homogeneity

13. heterogeneity

14. interpretation

15. implementation

16. approximate

17. innovative

18. controversial

19. comprehensive

20. alternative

21. analogous

22. characteristic

23. homogenous

24. applicable

2. Many of the technical words you already know will combine to form useful phrases or word partnerships.

e.g. surface facilities gas-lift equipment oil detection fluid displacement

Learning lots of word partnerships, instead of just words, reduces the amount of thinking you have to do in a presentation. It also helps you to sound more fluent in English.

Ex. 17. Pronounce the following phrases with clear phrase stress.

1. reservoir fluids

2. production engineer

3. stock tank oil in place

4. core properties

5. water resistivity

6. water saturation

7. gas-oil ratio

8. interpolation algorithm

9. pressure gradient

10. production casing