How to Rock Your Presentation:
Presentation Skills for IB Students
Nail your TOK exhibitions, IOs and other oral assessments.
Written by Manel Llado, PhD
As an IB student, you are no stranger to the demands of this rigorous educational program. The IB curriculum places great emphasis on holistic development, critical thinking, and effective communication. In line with these objectives, mastering presentation skills becomes an indispensable asset that will not only benefit you academically but also in your future endeavors.
Throughout your IB journey, you will encounter numerous opportunities where presenting your ideas, projects, and research will be crucial. From internal assessments and group projects to the Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) presentations, the need to communicate effectively and persuasively is ever-present. Hence, it is essential to hone your presentation skills to thrive in these situations and achieve your desired outcomes. In this article we provide practical tips, strategies, and insights that will empower you to excel in your IB presentations.
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Your teacher has asked you to prepare an oral presentation. Now what?
We’ve all been in this situation. The teacher is explaining the next assignment, and it sounds cool. Until he says that you’ll have to do a presentation in front of the whole classroom. Then the panic starts. Me? Talk in front of everyone? About what? I can’t do that!
You know what? Actually, you can! Presenting in front of an audience is a skill, and like any other skill, it can be learned. I myself had no idea how to make a good presentation in the beginning. But during my career as a scientist, I learned from some great mentors and practiced a lot, and this has allowed me to give oral presentations at international congresses all over the world, in front of hundreds of people.
You can do it too! All it takes is practice and some tips on how to prepare yourself. In this article, I will give you my 16 most important tips on how to prepare and deliver an oral presentation.
16 Great Tips to Prepare Your Oral Presentation:
1. Start with the basics: Define one main idea or message that you want your audience to understand after they have listened to your presentation. We will call this your take-home message. Your presentation will be structured to make sure your audience understand this take-home message.
2. Build a story: An oral presentation is nothing more than telling your audience a story. As any other story, it should have a beginning, a body and an ending. It can even have a twist or two! Before you start making any slides, decide what is the story you are going to tell your audience. This story should be coherent and follow a narrative flow. It will make it easier for your audience to follow the ideas you will present to them.
3. Make one slide for each idea: Once you have your story, divide it into the main ideas or pieces of information you want to share. Then make one slide for each. This allows you to better separate the main concepts so that they’re easier to understand for your audience. It also helps you better follow the flow of your story while presenting. Win-win!
4. Keep your slides simple: Cluttered slides full of information can be overwhelming to your audience. If there is too much going on in your slides, people are going to have to spend their time trying to figure them out instead of listening to you. To avoid that, keep your slides simple and include only the essential information.
5. Use the one-minute rule: As a rule of thumb, it should take you at most around one minute to explain a slide. Longer than that, and you risk losing your audience’s attention. If it takes you too long to explain a slide, you probably have too much information in it. Split it in two and make each slide simpler and faster to explain.
6. Avoid big blocks of text: Nobody comes to your presentation to read a slide full of text. It’s boring and it looks terrible. Instead of writing a big text, use bullet points to enumerate the main ideas or pieces of information in your slide, and connect them through your speech.
7. Use the blind-deaf rule: When preparing your slides, imagine that in your audience there is going to be one blind person and one deaf person. The blind person can hear your talk, but not see your slides. The deaf person can see the slides, but not hear your talk. Both of those people should be able to get all of the information in your presentation. That means that everything in your slides should be talked about, and everything you talk about should be understood just by looking at the slides. So don’t have things in there just to have them if you are not going to talk about them.
8. Avoid complicated animations: While animations can be useful in some situations, they can make your presentation more complicated too. Also, if programmed wrong, they can mess up your presentation and make you nervous. If they’re not necessary, avoid them.
9. Use animations to focuse your audience’s attention: Didn’t I just tell you to not use animations? Well, yes and no. One good use for animations is to gradually reveal parts of your slide so that people can focus only on the parts you are actually talking about. Especially in slides that need to have a lot of information, showing only part of it is a good way to not lose your audience. Then when you are done with the first part, you can show the rest of the slide and explain it too.
10. Have a conclusion slide: Your presentation may include a lot of information and ideas. That can make your audience lose focus of what the main topic was. Kind of not seeing the forest for the trees. For this reason, it is great to have a conclusion slide in which you can repeat your take-home message. It will also be a nice closure for your presentation.
11. Try explaining your story with the slides: Once your slides are done, try to explain your story out loud following the order of the slides. Is something out of place? Does something not fit the way you’re trying to explain it? Then go back to your slides and make the necessary changes.
12. Do not read from your presentation: We’ve all seen this. A person who spends their whole presentation reading the text in their slides. Not only is this boring, as we could all read them instead, it also shows poor presentation skills. As we said, your slides should only include some bullet points with the main ideas, and your presentation should connect those ideas. So don’t read, explain. Your audience will be much more engaged and you will look a lot better.
13. Don’t try to memorize your presentation: A mistake most inexperienced people make when trying to prepare for an oral presentation is to write down what they would like to say and then try to memorize it word per word. That is dangerous, because if you forget a specific word you wanted to say, you may lose your thread and get into presenter’s block. To avoid that, don’t try to memorize your presentation. Just go over your slides and try to explain your content in your own words, the same way you would explain it to a friend. When you do this several times, you will realize you naturally find new and better ways to explain things, which feel more natural and stick in your brain. That’s because you’re understanding instead of memorizing.
14. Practice your presentation: As with everything, practice makes perfect! Practice your presentation by going over it several times. You’ll perfect the way you explain things and make it feel more natural to yourself and your audience.
15. Get feedback: Practicing your presentation in front of others is a great way to get some nerves off, as well as receive useful feedback. Your friends can tell you if one of your slides is confusing, an idea is not clear enough or you’re talking to quickly. Integrate that feedback into your presentation and make it the best it can be!
16. Breathe: Now your presentation is ready, you are ready. You only need to breathe and calm down. You will do great! And even your mistakes will be a learning opportunity to do even better next time. Now go kill it!
You finished your presentation, what’s next?
You reached your last slide! Good job! But that’s not the end of your presentation. There are probably going to be some questions: welcome all of them and try to answer them the best you can. It’s fine to say you don’t know something! But appreciate the questions, because they mean people are interested in what you were telling them about!
Once there are no more questions to be answered, remember to thank your audience for their attention.
If possible, ask your audience for feedback and take notes so that you can improve your future presentations.
You did it! You finished your oral presentation! You’re going to feel great and very excited for some minutes. That’s called an endorphin rush. Enjoy it! 😉
About the Author
Manel is a scientist with PhD in Gene Editing who also tutors Science and Math at U4Success. He is passionate about sharing the skills he acquired during his life in academia and he hopes that more students can benefit from his experience.