Some strategies to give an effective PowerPoint presentation for the 4th year student of English Faculty, Hanoi Open University

The objective of the work is to bring out some strategies which are helpful in giving an effective PowerPoint presentation for senior students of English Faculty, Hanoi Open University

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 4

Rationale 4

Aims of the study 5

Scope of the study 6

Method of the study 6

Design of the study 6

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 8

1.1 Definition of PowerPoint presentation 8

1.2 The structure of a PowerPoint presentation 8

1.3 Types of presentations 9

1.3.1 Based on the presentation’s purpose 9

1.3.2 Based on the presentation’s manner 10

1.4 The importance of PowerPoint Presentation skill 11

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 13

2.1 Survey on senior student’s habit of presenting 13

2.1.1 The subjects 13

2.1.2 Data collection 13

2.1.3 Questionnaire 13

2.2 The finding and discussion 14

CHAPTER 3: STRATEGIES TO GIVE AN EFFECTIVE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION 17

3.1 Good content 18

3.1.1 Determine the aims of the presentation 18

- Analyzing the audience 18

- Choosing and narrowing topic 19

- Determining the purpose 19

3.1.2 Create an outline 20

3.2 Good design 21

3.2.1 Slide Structure 21

3.2.2 Fonts 23

3.2.2.1 Font types: 23

3.2.2.2 Font size: 24

3.2.3 Colors 26

3.2.4 Background 28

3.2.5 Charts 30

3.3 Good delivery 32

3.3.1 Audience’s attention 32

3.3.2 Nonverbal language 36

3.3.2.1 Gesture 36

Effective gestures: 37

Ineffective gestures: 38

3.3.2.2 Eye contact 39

- The power of eye contact 39

- What makes a speaker not have strong eye contact? 39

- How to use eye contact in presentation? 40

- Practise making eye contact 41

3.3.2.3 Voice 41

- Rate: 42

- Tone: 42

3.3.3 Signpost language 43

- What is signpost language? 43

- The role of signpost language 43

- How to use signpost language in presentation? 44

3.3.4 Rehearsal 46

CONCLUSION 48

REFERENCES 49

APPENDIX 50

Rationale

We are living in a modern society where communication skill isindispensable Among different communication skills is public speaking skillwhich probably is the most difficult one Ability of giving a good presentation isextremely important for those who want to success When you are still on theschool-desk, you need presentation skill to discuss or argue some point of viewwith your classmate When you are at work, in the future, you need this skill toreport your work to your colleagues and manager, or introduce and sell someproduct to your customers If you are manager, presentation skill is even muchmore necessary It helps you to success in negotiating with your partners orinspiriting your staffs

Together with technology development, MS PowerPoint program has alsobeen developed Today, it has become so popular MS PowerPoint is a very strongtool supporting for presentations A PowerPoint presentation delivers a messagemuch more effectively than a normal oral presentation because it is a combination

of words, pictures and sound

However, it is not everyone can give an effective PowerPoint presentation Aperson who is able to make a good oral presentation can make a bad PowerPointpresentation due to his design mistakes

As a student at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University, I have givenseveral PowerPoint presentations before classmates and I have also been anaudience for many times I see that even when we are senior students, we stillrarely make an effective PowerPoint presentation Hence, in this study I would like

to focus on finding difficulties which senior students often meet and commonmistakes they often do.

“Some strategies to give an effective PowerPoint presentation for the 4 th year student of English Faculty, Hanoi Open University” is a very helpful and

interesting topic so I decided to choose it for my Graduation Paper

Aims of the study

The objective of the work is to bring out some strategies which are helpful ingiving an effective PowerPoint presentation for senior students of English Faculty,Hanoi Open University There are many strategies for giving an effectivePowerPoint Presentation but in this study, I would like to focus on finding whatdifficulties senior students usually meet and which mistakes they often do whengiving a PowerPoint presentation From that point, I would like to bring out someeffective strategies to help students of English in general and the 4th year students

of English at HOU in particular to overcome difficulties and avoid makingmistakes

My study focuses on 3 steps:

- Step 1: Overviews basic PowerPoint presentation knowledge

- Step 2: Presents a survey to get what exactly students find hard and whichmistakes they often do when giving a PowerPoint presentation

- Step 3: Proposes effective ways of giving a PowerPoint presentation based on theresult drawn from the survey

Scope of the study

PowerPoint presentation is not a small field for research Therefore, I wouldlike to draw out some strategies of giving an effective PowerPoint presentationonly My research aimed at senior students at Faculty of English, Hanoi OpenUniversity

Method of the study

In order to accomplish this thesis systematically and adequately, I haveacquired all the literature resources from many sources of data such as the internet,magazines, newspapers and books in the Library of Faculty of English and ModernLanguages, Hanoi Open University as well as the National Library I implemented

a survey with subjects who are senior students of English Faculty, Hanoi OpenUniversity Personal observation consulted and discussed by my supervisor in theprocess of researching also contributed much to the completion of this thesis

Design of the study

My study is divided into 3 main parts:

1 Introduction includes:

- Rationale

- Aims of the study

- Scope of the study

- Method of the study

- Design of the study

2 Development includes 3 chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature review

- Types of presentation

- The role of presentation skill

Chapter 2: The study

- Habit of giving PowerPoint presentation of senior students of EnglishFaculty, HOU

- The findings and discussion

Chapter 3: Some strategies to give an effective PowerPoint presentation

3 Conclusion and References summarizes all the main points in the wholegraduation paper

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Definition of PowerPoint presentation

- What is a PowerPoint presentation?

A power point presentation is a presentation which is carried out with the support of PowerPoint, a presentation software program

1.2 The structure of a PowerPoint presentation

Like other kinds of presentation, a PowerPoint presentation includes threeparts:

The introduction:

- Greeting the audience

- Tell your audience the topic of the presentation

- Tell your audience the purposes of the presentation

- Show your audience how the presentation will be developed

The body:

- Present the first key points

- Use supporting ideas for this point

- Present the second key points

- Use supporting ideas for this point

- And so on…

The conclusion:

- State the main points again

- Evaluate the importance of the information

- Formulate some conclusions and/or recommendations

- Persuasive presentation:

A persuasive presentation is a speech aimed at influencing values, ideas,beliefs and attitudes of the audience Pragmatically, a persuasive presentation isused to convince people to get a different idea, attitude and belief, react tosomething, consider doing things they were previously unwilling to do

- Entertaining presentation:

Entertaining presentation focuses on the overall theme of the entertainmentspeechwriting occasion The presentation is oriented to entertainment, so that the

audience could get relaxed, react to the presentation in a hearty way, and enjoyevery minute of the entertaining speech.

- Inspirational presentation:

Inspirational speech is a speech presented by a professional speaker or by arenowned authority/leader in front of large homogeneous audiences such ascorporate staff, etc in order to encourage them, reveal the true sense of leadershipand enrich them with some approved formulae of commercial and professionalsuccess

1.3.2 Based on the presentation’s manner

- Written presentation:

Written presentations may include story, manual, report, book, newspaperarticle, letter, diary (for one person), scroll, booklet, pamphlet (for small group),questionnaire, survey (for small or large group), advertisement and chart (for largegroup)

- Oral presentation:

Oral presentations may include interview, report, conversation (for oneperson), discussion group, seminar, debate (for small group), advertisement,lecture, talk show, song, debate, choral speech, lesson (for large group)

- Visual presentation:

Visual presentations may include project cube, page sized chart or diagram(for one person), cartoon, photographs, display (for small group), poster, timeline,web page, map, large diagram, puppet show, overheads (for large group)

- Multimedia presentation:

Multimedia presentation is a combination of written, oral and visual

presentations, for example, a computer presentation such as Power Point

presentation

1.4 The importance of PowerPoint Presentation skill

In today’s world, PowerPoint presentation skill is synonymous withpresentation success of any kind! Thanks to Bill Gates and his team ofprofessionals who developed MS PowerPoint, today most of us have access to what

is considered a basic and most staple tool to effective presentations No matter ifyou are a student or a professor or a business professional or even a scientist, if youare out there in this world, you need PowerPoint presentation skills to besuccessful

- PowerPoint Presentation skill for students

These days, it is important for students to learn PowerPoint skills right fromhigh school With practice, by the time they reach university, they will havemastered the art of making effective presentations

Today, whether you are a graduate or an undergraduate student, most classesdemand that you write papers and present them in front of the whole class If you

do not use effective tools to make presentations, you can forget getting greatgrades Most professors expect you to know how to use the PowerPoint tool This

is especially important if you are a doctoral student No thesis is marked completewithout a final presentation to the faculty Not knowing how to present effectivelyusing this tool, could cost you your degree

- PowerPoint Presentation skill for professors

In the event you are a professor, the importance of PowerPoint skills cannot

be stressed enough You need to know how to present effectively in order to keepthe attention of the class Using monotonous presentations will bore the class andaffect their attention levels Presentations need to be stimulating and interesting asstudents learn maximum though a combination of visual and auditory mode Onlythen will students respond and retain information you wish to impart

- PowerPoint Presentation skill for business professionals

Success in the business world depends mostly on presentation skills Thereasons for this are simple Most businesses run on presentations Be it internalpresentations to your management about the status of a project or a salespresentation to a potential client, failing there could end up costing you your job

Business professional from all departments need to know how to presenteffectively Whether you are training a group of new recruits or holding anadvanced training session for a technical team; effective presentation is a key tosuccess These days’ professionals also have to use PowerPoint to relayinformation to their own team mates and colleagues

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This research focuses on the way senior students of English Faculty at HanoiOpen University give a PowerPoint presentation Due to the course’s demand, eachstudent must give PowerPoint presentation several times per school year How tomake an effective PowerPoint presentation is a problem that most students takecare of

2.1 Survey on senior student’s habit of presenting

2.1.1 The subjects

100 senior students (K13) of English Faculty, Hanoi Open University wererandomly chosen for the project All of them have ever given some PowerPointpresentations

2.1.2 Data collection

The survey which aims at collecting necessary data for the project consists ofthree steps:

- Handing out questionnaires to subjects

- Deleting invalid cases

- Collecting the final number of the remaining valid and reliable cases

After deleting invalid cases, the number of remaining cases is 95

2.1.3 Questionnaire

This questionnaire is designed to survey the student’s habit of presenting:from the way they preparing, designing to giving a presentation The first twoquestions of the questionnaire focus on finding which way students prepare fortheir presentation The next three questions aim at finding out the way studentsdesign their presentation slides The next three questions help me know their habitwhen giving presentation And the last two questions will discover the difficulties

student often encounter in presenting process Through this survey, I can knowexactly student’s difficulties as well as their common mistakes in giving aPowerPoint presentation.

2.2 The finding and discussion

The following table shows us a clear result of the survey:

- More than half of the students (55 out of 95) think that it is not or not tooimportant to create an outline Even when they have had a destination (a specificpurpose), if they have no map (outline), they can not reach their destination in thebest way In case that they do not have both destination and map, where will they

go to?

- Only 7 students rarely use font styles More than half sometimes use it and 33 onealways This is also a problem! Using no font styles make your presentation lessinteresting but abusing them can break the presentation

- There are still 35 students (out of 95) think that more backgrounds moreinteresting the presentation is They have put slide decoration at a higher positionthan delivering their message

- More than half of the students (74 out of 95) always use illustrations This makes

a problem! Although illustration enhances the message, using them a lot candistract the audience

- Almost student (80 out of 95) thinks that it is most important to introduce clearlythe topic in the introduction Just 15 students know that getting the audience’sattention is more important Introducing the topic is important, but if you do not getthe audience’s attention right after starting, you can lose them

- Just 8 students always use signpost language during their presentation, the restrarely or sometimes use it Signpost language is very important for the audience tocatch what you say Therefore, the students should learn how to use signpostlanguage to deliver their message more effectively

- Most of the students (90 out of 95) do not know what to do with their hands andafraid of looking at the audience This means body language is one of their weakpoints They should pay more time to learn this skill

- More than half of the students (55 out of 95) often forget what to say while therest often stammer This is because they do not have enough practice.

We can draw out from the result of the survey the following things:

- The common mistakes that senior students often do are preparation, design,starting the presentation

- The difficulty that senior students often meet is using body language

CHAPTER 3: STRATEGIES TO GIVE AN EFFECTIVE

Content

Delivery Design

3.1 Good content

As I mentioned above, good or bad content depends on your preparation Ifyou fail to prepare, you are prepared to fail Unlike everyday conversation,presentations have a clear purpose and a logical structure Therefore, in order togive an effective presentation it is necessary to prepare carefully Thoroughpreparation will also reduce ones anxiety during the actual presentation

The survey’s result shows that the preparation of most students includes onlytwo steps: choosing a topic that they like and collecting materials They rarelydetermine the aim of their presentation as well as create an outline This makestheir materials collection not effective and their presentation not have a focus Howcan the audience get the message when the students themselves do not knowexactly what they want to deliver?

So what steps should you take to assure a successful talk and to make itworth the time of the audience and yourself? Following is what you need to do:

3.1.1 Determine the aims of the presentation

- Analyzing the audience

Audience analysis is important because:

- Audiences are egocentric They do not care how important what you aresaying is, but whether it is related to them

- Audiences will judge a speech based on what they already know andbelieve

Therefore, you should try to collect information about the audience as much

as possible to choose a right topic and collect suitable materials It helps you toknow how to meet the audience’s demand and how to draw their attention

To do audience analysis, you need to collect information to answer thesequestions:

- What is your audience’s needs/interests?

- How much they know about the topic?

- What misconception might they have?

- What terms and concept will they probably not understand?

- Choosing and narrowing topic.

You have had your audience’s information about what their needs/interestsare Now you can decide what your presentation is about Don’t try to include toomuch information in your presentation because your audience has a limitedmemory You should narrow the topic

My presentation is about finding job for fresh-graduated students

- Determining the purpose

Even when you have narrowed the topic, your presentation will not have aclear focus if you do not determine the purpose for it It is like that you decide to goshopping but do not know what you need to buy You will probably waste yourtime

For example:

- To analyze the main reasons of high divorce rate in Vietnam

- To give out some tips for fresh-graduated students in finding job

3.1.2 Create an outline

A speaker is like a guide, leading the listener through a cluster of ideas Anoutline is like a map showing the best path Therefore, creating an outline is anecessary part of the presenting process Creating an outline will result in betterquality, well constructed and more effective presentation

To create an effective outline, you should follow these steps:

- Developing centre idea

- Generating main ideas

- Gathering supporting material

For example:

Centre idea: Some strategies to give an effective PowerPoint presentation.Main ideas:

- Prepare carefully

Supporting materials: Analyze audience

Choose and narrow topicDetermine the purposeCreate an outline

- Make a good design

Supporting materials: Slide structure

FontsColors Background

- Delivery effectively.

Supporting materials: An attractive introduction

Use nonverbal languageUse signpost languageRehearsal

3.2 Good design

3.2.1 Slide Structure

Many students do make mistakes of slide structure The most commonmistake is that they always try to fill the slide with text This makes the audienceconcentrate on what they write, not what they are speaking

There are some certain rules that you must follow:

- Use 1-2 slides per minute of your presentation

- Make your 1st or 2nd slide an outline of your presentation, then follow the order ofyour outline for the rest of the presentation Remember to place only main points

on the outline slide

- No more than 4-5 bullets per slide, and keep bullet points to no more than fivelevels

- Use key words and phrases only, not complete sentences or paragraphs

You should also limit the number of words per line (normally no more thanseven words) and the number of lines per slide (normally no more than sevenlines)

For example:

Slide structure – Good

 No more than 4-5 bullets per slide.

 Use key words and phrases only.

 Not use complete sentences or paragraphs

Slide structure – Bad

 This is an example of a bad slide structure.

 It looks too complicated.

 It makes your audience not concentrate on what you are

saying.

 You use too many bullets.

 You use complete sentences instead of key words.

 You use paragraph This makes it difficult both for your audience to read and for you to present each point Too many words look too complicated In short, your audience will spend too much time trying to read this paragraph instead of listening to you.

3.2.2.1 Font types:

Serif fonts are the ones with little tails attached to each letter Times New

Roman is an example of a serif font Serif fonts were designed to be used indocuments filled with lots of text Serif fonts are said to be easier to read at smallpoint sizes, but for on screen presentations the serifs tend to get lost due to therelatively low resolution of projectors These types of fonts can be suitable forheadlines

Sans serif fonts are fonts that look more like “stick letters” They are plain

and simple These fonts are great for body on your slides An example of sans seriffonts is Arial

Avoid script type fonts - always These fonts are hard to read at the best of

times In a darkened room, and especially at the back of the room, they are almostimpossible to read

Some students do not take note of consistency of font types They choosedifferent font types for different slides Although those font types are easy to read

or readable, it makes the audience’s attention lower So, you should use two, or atmost, three fonts for the whole presentation, use the slide master before you startentering text to establish the chosen fonts on the slides This avoids having tochange each slide individually

Tips: Use different fonts for headlines and bullet points.

Choose a different font for the headlines and the bullet points This makestext slides a little bit more interesting

3.2.2.2 Font size:

Certainly everyone knows we should use different font sizes for headlinesand main points, but not everyone knows that we should also use different fontsizes for main points and secondary points as well as lower levels.

As my observation, most students use the same font size for both main pointsand lower levels This distracts the audience from the really important points

Following is the guideline for choosing good font sizes:

- Headlines: 35-45 points

- Bullet points:

+ Level one: 30 points

+ Level two: 28 points

+ Level three: 24 points

+ Level four: 22 points

+ Level five: 20 points

3.2.2.3 Font style:

There are different styles such as Bold, Italic and Underline for you to usefor emphasis But some students abuse them They apply font styles not to somekey word but many on a slide, even a sentence Bold, Italic or Underline pose thesame problems as script type fonts – they are often hard to read

Capitalizing is the same You should use a combination of upper and lowercase and avoid using all capital letters – even for headings All caps are perceived

as shouting, and the words are more difficult to read

For example:

Fonts – Good

 Use a simple font.

 Use one size for main points

- and smaller size for lower levels

- and smaller size for lower levels

 Use a combination of UPPER and lower case.

 Use different styles for Emphasis.

Fonts – Bad

 Use script type fonts It is hard to read.

 CAPITALIZING ALL LETTERS IS ALSO DIFFICULT

TO READ.

3.2.3 Colors