Making an Effective Oral Presentation (1)

People give presentations in any ways in life. Today, presentation is important to show people how the job working and explain the people the job are doing. In academic, oral presentation is talking about research or assignment to show their achievement. The presentation can be oral (spoken), multimedia (using various media - visuals, audio, etc), PowerPoint presentations, short impromptu presentations, long planned presentations, educational or training sessions, lectures, and simply giving a talk on a subject to a group on a voluntary basis for pleasure,(www.bussinessball.com). So, what is oral presentation?

The word “oral” from oxford dictionary (2007) mean spoken or not written. While, “presentation” is a meeting at which something is shown or explained to a group of people (Oxford, 2007). Thomas Leech (2004) give presentation is the practice of showing and explaining the content of a topic to an audience or learner. Presentations and reports are ways of communicating ideas and information to a group. But unlike a report, a presentation carries the speaker's personality better and allows immediate interaction between all the participants. (Donald Clark-www.nwlink.com-1998).

Oral Presentation is a talk given to a group in which you present your views on an issue or topic based on your readings or research (University of South Australia). In website www.thefreedictionary.com defined oral presentation is delivering and address to public audience.

For the conclusion, the oral presentation is speech in the part of communication with somebody can describe or explain the ideas to audience who can understand more. It can be present with a technology especially Microsoft PowerPoint or others to improve understanding and make audiences clearly about the topic.

Speech Training

People who want to present something must train themselves. Dr. Carol Fleming – Specializing in Vocal Development and Communication Training listed training must be included voice improvement. It becomes verbally competent, fluent and gracious. It’s also included the breath, voice, intonation or others. Second, communication skills development. It’s developing a commanding presence. Skills can be improve highly with step by step development and trained by professional. Third, improve public speaking. People can speak with confidence and gain credibility. It’s help to more relaxing and enjoying while presentation. Last is developing your social skills in the workplace, that’s the secrets for getting promoted. This is how we can explain our research or work with job mate or friends and also how we communicate with them softly, clearly and friendly.

3.0 THE ORAL COMMUNICATION MODEL

3.1 Transactional Model of Communication

The oral presentation have link with transactional model of communication. So, the presentation is suitable with this model. Transactional communication model is depicts communicators as sending and receiving massages simultaneously. This model includes with communication elements is communicators, encode, decode and channel. (Maria Brignall-www.wisc-online.com-1999). In the other hands, the speaker and the listener are sending and receiving the massage. It can be a communicator as a sender as well as a receiver simultaneously. In the other word, speaker and listener can interact with the idea to increase the information or respond things. This can make the situation more alive during the presentation.

Skills and strategies in public speaking are so important. We need to know what are the strategies could do to deliver the ideas then reach to the audience. Skills must be studied and improved all the times to avoid one way communication or boring situation during the presentation. It is includes how to tackle the audience, interesting slides, relevant pictures and videos, humour, question between speakers and audience and etc.

4.0 AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

We need to analyze our audience. Why? It is because it can help our presentation more fluent and smoothly. Rahimah Yeop (INTAN, 2006) listed that audience analyzed about a number of audiences, age of audience, audience’s sex, audience’s race and the backgrounds. We should also analyze the level of their interest. Knowing the audiences can make the presenter do the early preparation for example the voices technique or the technical support such as Power Point slides. The age showing which the proper way can we talk during the presentation. The presentation can be control even we know the number of our audience. The speech should not go too far with touching the thing about gender. The presenter must be alert if the content of the presentations related on races, cultures and the backgrounds in order to that the speech do not touch the sensitivity of people .