Unit 1: What is the point? -- Communication skills: Key features of an effective presentation -- Language knowledge: Review of time expressions and tenses -- Presentation practice: Presenting background information

Unit 2: Making a start -- Communication skills: Making a good introduction -- Language knowledge: How to introduce yourself and your talk -- Presentation practice: Preparing and giving the introduction

Unit 3: Linking the parts -- Communication skills: Ways of organizing a presentation -- Language knowledge: Key words and phrases for linking ideas -- Presentation practice: Signposting the organization of a presentation

Unit 4: The right kind of language -- Communication skills: Advantages of speaking versus reading -- Language knowledge: Personal and impersonal language styles -- Presentation practice: Changing the written language to spoken language

Unit 5: Visual aids -- Communication skills: Making a well-designed and well-presented visual aid -- Language knowledge: Describing graphs, charts, and trends -- Presentation practice: Designing and using good visual aids

Unit 6: Body language -- Communication skills: The importance of body language -- Language knowledge: Ways of emphasizing and minimizing your message -- Presentation practice: Using body language to communicate your message clearly and persuasively

Unit 7: Finishing off -- Communication skills: Making an effective ending to a presentation -- Language knowledge: The language of endings -- Presentation practice: Ending a presentation

Unit 8: Question time -- Communication skills: How to handle questions effectively -- Language knowledge: Asking and answering questions -- Presentation practice: Handling questions at the end of a presentation

Unit 9: Putting it all together -- Communication skills: How to evaluate the effectiveness of a presentation -- Language knowledge: Review of delivery techniques and key language -- Presentation practice: Giving and evaluating a presentation

"Effective Presentations is a practical video-based course aimed at professional people who need to make presentations in English. It takes learners systematically through the key communication and language skills needed to make clear, well-organized presentations, and enables them to develop these skills in realistic ways. With the video as its central element, the course focuses on the main skills involved in giving presentations, from starting and concluding, to using visual aids and handling questions. It looks at useful language for performing these skills, and offers authentic presentation practice tasks incorporating the learner’s own knowledge and experience. The video illustrates both bad and good versions of presentations for analysis and discussion. It focuses on the mistakes often made by presenters and demonstrates ways to avoid them, providing a positive model for learners to follow. Intended for intermediate and upper-intermediate level students, Effective Presentations lends itself to both classroom-based teaching and self-study. It can be used as a short intensive specialist course, or integrated into a wider-ranging Business English programme. The course consists of four interdependent components: a 35 minute video, accompanying Student’s Book, audio cassette, and Teacher’s Book. Effective Presentations was developed from materials used by York Associates, a specialist language and communications training partnership, based in York, England" (Book cover).

Intended for intermediate and upper-intermediate level students (B1-B2).