In this Business English Pod lesson, we’re going to learn how to introduce a presentation in English.
And if you think this topic sounds familiar, you’re right! This lesson is the start of a new series where we’ll take a fresh look at some of our older lessons. We’re going to keep the original dialog and record new explanations and practices with the aim of making these lessons more accessible to some of our lower level learners.
So what should we say to introduce a presentation? Well, how about starting with a greeting, like a simple “hello!” And what comes after a greeting? Your name! So, we’ve got something like “Hello I’m Tim.” Great, what’s next? Well, it’s a good idea to tell people who you work for and what your job is, like “And I’m a marketing manager at SwiftBuy.”
Now that you’ve introduced yourself, you can introduce your presentation. What do people want to know about your presentation? The topic is important of course. That might sound something like “I’m going to be talking about our advertising strategy.” And besides the topic, how about the organization and the goal of your presentation? Think about when you listen to a presentation. You want to know what you’re going to be hearing about and why, right?
Okay, now what about questions? People want to ask questions, right? So you should mention how you’ll handle questions, maybe like this: “At the end of the presentation we’ll have about 15 minutes for questions.”
So there you have the important parts of an introduction. And you can use these ideas in more than just presentations. I mean, you have to introduce yourself in many different situations, right? And introducing a topic and a goal is something you might do at the start of any meeting or discussion.
In the dialog you’re going to hear a presenter named Claude. Claude is presenting an “analysis” of sales data. When we talk about “analysis” or use the verb “analyze”, we’re talking about looking closely at something to understand it. So Claude is looking closely at sales information and explaining what he sees to a group of managers.
Listening Questions
1. At the beginning of the presentation, what language does Claude use to sound friendly?
2. What is Claude’s job?
3. What does Claude “hope to” do?
4. What is the “final” part of the presentation going to be?
Download: Podcast MP3
