Ensuring your presentation is well planned is obviously necessary if you are going to speak in your native tongue. It is more necessary if you are making a presentation in a foreign language like English. Your presentation should have clearly separate parts such as in the following outline.
Introduce yourself, your company and then what you are going to talk about.
Divide your talk into parts (try to limit them to around three), each part dealing with a separate subject. For example,
a) the history of the company,
b) the products we offer today,
c) our vision for the future.
Depending on the subject, you may want to give a brief summary of what you have said and stress the main points.
After the summary, you can simply tell your audience that you have finished your presentation, thank them for attending and ask if they have any questions they would like to ask you. The question phase may require language skills you feel you do not have. You may ask a colleague with a more advanced level of English to come up and take questions at this point. This dynamic works well and you can add your comments as answers to your colleague's. In this way, you gain confidence in receiving questions and participate with your colleague in the answering process rather than just stand there saying nothing.
Answering questions in English after your presentation with no help could be the most difficult part because:
a) you may find the question difficult to understand, and
b) you must improvise your answers.
Do not be afraid to ask the person asking the question to repeat what he/she said. If you are still not sure what was said exactly, you can check by saying:
"So what you're asking is: are there going to be any new products in the near future? Is that right?"
By checking in this way, you should eventually understand what the question is. In a multilingual environment, your audience should be sympathetic and understand you are not speaking in your native language.
Another precaution you can take is to anticipate what questions may be asked. Before the presentation, brainstorm this and write down possible questions your audience may ask. Then imagine yourself answering these questions. Let the imaginary dialogue take place in your head - in English, of course! In this way, you will prepare yourself mentally as well as anticipate any words which may be used that you do not know in English. You can then look the words up in a dictionary before going to the presentation.
However, if you really feel your English is not at a sufficiently high level to answer questions and you have no help from a colleague, you may just leave out the option completely and not include it in your presentation.
Whatever you decide, try not to place yourself in any situation which may cause you unnecessary stress or nervousness. Be in control, be yourself and never apologize for not speaking good English. Break the rules for giving presentations a little if you need to so that you can convey your message and ideas in a way that suits you and your own knowledge of English. Your audience will applaud your efforts and valour!
Part 3 - Using presentation software
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