Using your voice effectively

How you say something is often just as important as what you say. You can use your voice and the way you stress words or make pauses in sentences to make your presentation more interesting and easier for the audience to follow.

Stressing words

By emphasizing particular words or parts of words you create certain effects. Notice how you can change the meaning of a sentence by putting the stress on a different word.

We all know that this is an extremely difficult market. (It’s more than just difficult.)

We all know that this is an extremely difficult market. (You and I agree on this.)

We all know that this is an extremely difficult market. (But they don’t.)

Making pauses

You can use pauses to slow your pace down and make your sentences easier to understand. Group words into phrases according to their meaning and make pauses between the phrases.

In my opinion we should go into other markets.

In my opinion // we should go // into other markets.

On the other hand, the figures prove that we are on the right track.

On the other hand, // the figures prove // that we are on the right track.

More Quick Tips For Using Your Voice Effectively here

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Concluding a presentation

The end or the conclusion of your talk should include four parts

• Give a brief reminder of what you tried to show in your speech and how you tried to do so

  You should briefly summarize your speech in a few lines to make sure the audience has retained the main points. Alternatives are to just simply: state the point of the speech; give the essential message to retain; list the main points and what you want the audience to remember; review informally or indirectly by using a quote, a comparison or example.

• Present a short conclusion,

  That is to say you should give a message that logically comes out of the ideas developed in your speech. This could be a commentary, the lessons learned, some recommendations, or the next steps

• Thirdly, thank the audience for attending.
• Invite the audience to ask questions or open a discussion.

  If you choose the former, you put yourself in a superior position compared to the audience and should be considered as an expert. You will need to be very prepared intellectually and psychologically to give control to the audience and able to answer any questions. However, in the case of the latter, you put yourself more or less on equal terms with the audience and do not have to be the expert with all the answers! The audience may have some clear ideas or some practical knowledge about the subject themselves!

NB The end of a talk should never come as a surprise to an audience but needs special consideration.

More hints on how to conclude here.

Concluding Your Presentation: End With A Bang, Not With A Whimper.  

Presentation Closing Tips

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