How to Organize Your Main Points When You Present in English

May 9, 2018 | Business Professional English, Public Speaking & Presentations

This lesson has been updated from its original version posted in 2016.

Everything you need to know to organize the main points of your introduction.

Preparing a presentation in English is hard work. You want to be sure your speech is clear, easy to understand, and well-organized. And that’s what today’s lesson will help you do.

Today we’re focusing on the body of your presentation. This is the core or focus of your presentation. This is where you give all the important key points plus the details you need to support your talk.

In the lesson, you’ll learn the best way to organize the body of your presentation and key expressions to help you.

Make sure your presentation is smooth and easy to understand.

Lesson by Annemarie

How to Organize Information When You Present in English

Here is a very simple way to think about the organization of your presentation.

In this example, we’ll imagine a 15-20 minute presentation with 3 Key Points:

Key Point 1:

  • Supporting detail 1
  • Supporting detail 2
  • Supporting detail 3

Key Point 2:

  • Supporting detail 1
  • Supporting detail 2
  • Supporting detail 3

Key Point 3:

  • Supporting detail 1
  • Supporting detail 2
  • Supporting detail 3

 

How many key points should you have?

When you are preparing your presentation, you want to be careful about how many key points you share. You want your audience to stay focused and interested. If you have too much information, your audience may become confused or bored.

As a general rule, use:

  • 3 key points for a 10-15 minute presentation.
  • 6 key points (or fewer) for a 30-minute presentation.
  • 8 key points (or fewer) for a 45-minute presentation.

Useful Language to Organize Your English Presentation

Starting a Topic

  • Let’s start with…
  • Let’s start by looking at…
  • To begin, I’d like to share with you…
  • I’d like to start with…

Moving from Topic to Topic

  • This leads me to my next point…
  • Now, let’s take a look at…
  • Now, I’d like to move on to…
  • Now, I’d like to turn to…
  • I’ll move on to my next point which is…
  • Moving on to the next point, I’d like to…
  • Now, let’s move on…

Referring to Previous Information

  • As I mentioned earlier…
  • As I mentioned in the introduction…
  • As you may remember, I shared…
  • As we touched on earlier…

Introducing Numbers, Graphs, or Charts

  • I’d like to bring your attention to this chart/graph…
  • To illustrate this point, please look at…
  • To highlight this…
  • As you can see here…
  • This graph/chart illustrates…

**Note: When possible, always use specific numbers because they are more memorable. Look at these two example sentences:

  • Many people joined the April Fluency Challenge.
  • 107 people participated in the April Fluency Challenge.

Which sentence is easier for you to remember?

 

Giving Examples

  • For instance…
  • For example…
  • I’d like to share an example of this with…
  • A good/bad example of this is…

 Rhetorical Questions*

*A rhetorical question is a question you ask but you don’t expect an answer. The purpose of the question is to make a point or get your audience to think about something. These are used often in English-speaking presentations.

  • So what can we learn from this?
  • So what does this information tell us?
  • So what can we learn from this chart?
  • How should we interpret these statistics?
  • You might be wondering, what does this mean?
  • How can we use this to our benefit?
  • How can we solve this?

“Preparing a presentation in English is hard work. You want to be sure your speech is clear, easy to understand, and well-organized. And that’s what today’s lesson will help you do.”

Get the complete Presentations in English Series:

Part 1: How to Prepare for Your Presentation in English

Part 2: How to Start with a Great Introduction in Your Presentation

Part 3: How to Organize Your Presentation in English

Part 4: How to End Your Presentation Powerfully

Please share your experience with presentations in English below.

Do you have some useful functional language you could share to help organize a presentation in English? In the lesson, I provided many phrases that are common for native speakers. I’ve love to hear from you.

You can share in the comments section below. It’s the best place to get feedback and learn from the Confident English Community.

Have a great week! ~ Annemarie

P.S. Do you know anyone who needs help with presentations in English? Please share this page with them! And if it is helpful to you, remember to like or share it. Thank you!

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