Presentations are a big part of school, and often cause people a lot of unnecessary stress. In my elementary school days, I would often get points marked off on my presentations for not speaking loud enough. However, as the years went on, I got a lot better with practice and I wanted to share my favorite tips and tricks to ace any presentation.
- Skip the notecards! Typically, when people get nervous, they start reading from their notecards, therefore breaking eye contact with the audience, making it easier for them to lose focus. A great way to keep a dynamic presence is to use the bullet points on your powerpoint as a written cue if you forget what to say. Rather than looking down at a full speech written on your notecards, try using the slides you created as a hint for what you have to say. Instead of memorizing a speech word for word, memorize the facts and content that you want to get across.
- Incorporate it into everyday life! As someone who genuinely enjoys giving presentations, I found ways to use powerpoints to my advantage in my everyday life. This helped me get even better at my speaking and memorization skills. Because I loved giving presentations, but I found studying incredibly boring at times, I started converting my notes into powerpoints and presenting them at study groups as a way to review. This way, you can ease yourself into the world of public speaking by practicing on people you are already comfortable with. In addition, it is a long-term way to recall information for tests. Because you are making the powerpoints for yourself and/or people you are close with, you can have more fun with it. For instance, you can add fun mnemonic devices, silly gifs, or even TV show/movie references that can help you remember things.
In the following case, I used a picture of a dessert called pavlova to remind me of Ivan Pavlov and how he used food in his experiments with dogs. Also, I used a gif of How I Met Your Mother to remind me of a famous classical conditioning experiment that involved fish.
- Keep your audience in mind! As an audience member who may be tested on the contents of a presentation eventually, it can be particularly frustrating when you are unable to see the slides clearly. From the back of an average classroom, the smallest visible font in Times New Roman is size 20. However, you should be using fonts way larger than that if you are able to. Be sure to use contrasting font colors that clearly stand out on the background color you’ve chosen (don’t use two light colors or two dark colors). Also, stay away from cursive fonts or fonts that are thin and don’t show up very well.
- Proper pictures! Stay away from small pictures off to the side of your presentation. Instead, make each picture take up at least half the slide. If your main focus of the slide is the picture, then don’t be afraid to blow it up to the full slide size.
- Relax! I know that this is a lot easier said than done, but from personal experience, it is easier to go in with the attitude of “it’s okay if I fail this” rather than “my whole future depends on me passing this.” Remember that you have been speaking all your life and try not to think of this as any different from your normal, everyday conversations. In the past, I have done really well on presentations that were not worth very many points and really poorly on presentations that were worth a lot more points simply because I was so worked up about it. Don’t be afraid to use logic and reality to talk yourself into relaxation. It is a common misconception that reality is worse than your imagination. However, when you put everything into perspective, it is clear that this presentation is not as life-threateningly important as your imagination may have led you to believe.