I highly recommend using a selection of the useful phrases and expressions below so you can present your points in a presentation or conference talk clearly and in a professional manner. We can call these useful expressions, signpost phrases as they indicate to your audience where you are going with your presentation at any particular moment. Using signpost phrases is also especially useful for:
a) you as the presenter because it helps you to organise your thoughts better in English;
b) your listeners, who may not be native English speakers either, because it will help them to follow your presentation more easily.
I advise memorising a few of these useful English phrases before your presentation. You may also write some on your prompt cards or A4-sized sheet if memorising your presentation.
Good morning, ladies and gentleman. My name's John Jones. I'm head of sales at Acme Services.
I would like to thank you for inviting me here today to talk about...
I would like to thank you all for attending this presentation. I plan to be brief.
I shall only take about fifteen minutes of your time.
If you have any questions, I'd be very happy to answer them at the end.
Feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions during my presentation. (Not recommended unless your English level is good.)
I'd like to give you a brief presentation about...
The subject of my talk is...
I'm going to talk about...
My topic today is...
My talk is concerned with...
The purpose of my talk is to...
I'm going to divide this talk into four parts.
There are a number of points I'd like to make.
Basically, I have three things to say.
This talk is designed to be a springboard for discussion on the topic of...
I'd like to begin by...
Let's begin by...
First of all, I'll discuss...
and then I'll go on to talk about
Then... / Next,...
Secondly,... / Thirdly,...
Finally,... / Lastly,..
That's all I have to say about...
So, in this section, we've looked at...
Well, I think I've said enough about...
Moving on now to
Turning now to...
Let's turn now to
So that brings me now to the topic of...
The next area I'd like to focus on next is
Now, we'll move on to...
I'd now like to discuss...
Let's now look at...
Where does that lead us?
Let's consider this in more detail...
I'd like to elaborate on what I said earlier about
What does this mean for...?
Translated into real terms, this means that...
Why is this important?
The significance of this is...
On the one hand,...
...on the other hand,...
For example,...
A good example of this is...
As an illustration, I'd like to mention...
To give you an example,...
To illustrate this point,...
If you'd like to look at this graph, you'll see...
Take a look at this table. Here, we can see quite clearly that...
This chart illustrates...
Let me show you a pie-chart that will make everything much clearer.
Simply put,...
In other words,...
So what I'm saying is,....
To put it more simply,...
To put it another way,...
To sum up,...
To summarise,...
In short,...
Right then, let's sum up, shall we?
Let's summarise briefly what we've looked at...
If I can just sum up the main points,...
Finally, let me remind you of some of the issues we've covered.
So, to remind you of what I've covered in this talk,...
Unfortunately, I seem to have run out of time, so I'll conclude very briefly by saying that...
I'd now like to recap on the points I've mentioned.
To conclude,...
In conclusion,...
Well, that covers all I wanted to say today.
Before I finish let me say just one last thing.
That brings me to the end of my presentation.
It just remains for me to say, thank you very much for coming and I hope you have found this presentation useful.
Does anyone have any questions or comments?
Please feel free to ask questions.
If you would like me to elaborate on any point I've made today, please ask.
Would you like to ask any questions?
Any questions?
Does that answer your question?
Is that clear?
May we go on then to the next question?
I hope I've made that clear.
So what you're saying is,...
...is that right?
It seems I don't have time to answer any more of your questions now. But please feel free to come and talk to me later on today.
Finally, if you can find the time, remember to rehearse your presentation, preferably in front of other colleagues who can offer you advice and suggest improvements. Rehearsing is not only a good way to practise your English language speaking skills, it may also be important to finish your presentation within a certain time limit - for example, twenty minutes. Over-running your time limit can ruin an otherwise perfect presentation. A full, practice rehearsal will help you time your presentation accurately.
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