blog | 4min Read
Published on November 12, 2020
Effective Presentation Skills & Techniques For High Schoolers
Maybe you will not be in a career where you need to do formal presentations, but communicating your ideas to others is still important.
Maybe you will not be in a career where you need to do formal presentations, but communicating your ideas to others is still important.
Effective Presentation skills mean that you can:
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Communicate information in a way that the audience will remain engaged in the topic
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Be effective at communicating your thoughts and feelings.
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Work on developing self-confidence
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Improve real-world skills used for things such as job interviews
Variety
Presenters should use variety in their presentations. Using variety helps to maintain the attention and interest of the audience. It is hard to stand in front of a group of people and communicate through talking alone.
Presentations should also use other audio-visual components. Use an appropriate method of conveying sound clips, posters, graphs, or other media to enhance the presentation.
Tone And Pace
Good presenters make sure their voice is loud and clear and that they are not speaking too quickly. To get better at presentations, practice enunciating your words. Proper enunciation will also help to speak at a reasonable speed.
If you speak too quickly, it is difficult for listeners to process the information. It is vital to allow the audience time to take notes and ask any questions they may have. Tone and Pace top the list of effective presentation skills.
Enthusiasm
Make sure you are not presenting in a monotone voice. You should be passionate about your topic, and you want to convey that passion to the audience. Use gestures and emphasize certain parts of the presentation. This helps to keep the audience engaged and interested.
Effective Presentation Skills For Interviews
When you go for a job interview, you are presenting yourself. A potential employer will be evaluating your personality, behaviors, and knowledge. It is important to portray yourself in a professional manner using appropriate communication skills. These skills are often learned and for high school students, an effective communication workshop can help.
Effective Presentation Skills In Business
Whether you are making formal presentations in your line of work or not, the skills are essential. Having good presentation skills means that you will be able to communicate your ideas to your boss or other colleagues effectively.
Knowing how to convey information most appropriately is a critical skill in any profession. Having strong presentation skills is also essential when it comes to leadership roles.
What Employers Want
Employers want people who are effective in communication. They look for candidates who have high written, oral, and listening skills. Presentations help to build on these skills and prepare you for the workforce in any occupation.
Presentations are comprised of both what you say and how you say it.
Preparing A Presentation
Make sure that you have a clear message that you are going to convey. State your key message in a single sentence and then build on it. Having a clear message helps to keep your presentation focused.
Make sure to develop the topic in an organized way. If you jump around too much, the audience will not be able to focus on the message. Start by introducing your topic and then lay out an overview so that your audience will know what is coming.
Use examples to develop your topic and make it relatable to the audience. Ensure that you have researched your subject well and remember to cite your sources.
Conclude your presentation with a restatement of the topic. Your conclusion should connect back to your introduction (as it would in a written paper). Highlight your key points and leave the audience with a clear message.
Another essential aspect of presentations is the ability to answer any questions the audience may have. Anticipate what kinds of questions people may ask so that you can have answers prepared. This is an excellent skill to have at a job interview!
As well as preparing what you will say, you also need to be aware of how you will say it. Presentations need to capture and hold the attention of the audience. If there is a way to engage the audience in the presentation, that is also a bonus. Can you have some discussion questions or do simulations of scenarios with the group?
Use visual aids to enhance the presentation but make sure they are carefully chosen and included with purpose. People in the audience will retain more information if they both hear and see it.
The Bottom Line
Effective Presentation skills are a part of communicating, and the better you get at it, the more prepared you will be for the workforce. Being able to convey ideas with confidence is an important skill to have.