Starting a Presentation

In modern English, Presentations tend to be much less formal than they were even twenty years ago. Most audience these days prefer a relatively informal approach. However, there is a certain structure to the opening of a Presentation that you should observe.

1. Get people's attention
2. Welcome them
3. Introduce yourself
4. State the purpose of your presentation
5. State how you want to deal with questions

Get people's attention

• If I could have everybody's attention.
• If we can start.
• Perhaps we should begin?
• Let's get started.

Welcome them

• Welcome to Microsoft.
• Thank you for coming today.
• Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
• On behalf of Intel, I'd like to welcome you.

Introduce yourself

• My name's Jane Shaw. I'm responsible for travel arrangements.
• For those of you who don't know me, my name's Tom Stotter.
• As you know, I'm in charge of public relations.
• I'm the new Marketing Manager.

State the purpose of your presentation

• This morning I'd like to present our new processor.
• Today I'd like to discuss our failures in the Japanese market and suggest a new approach.
• This afternoon, I'd like to report on my study into the German market.
• What I want to do this morning is to talk to you about our new mobile telephone system.
• What I want to do is to tell you about our successes and failures in introducing new working patterns.
• What I want to do is to show you how we've made our first successful steps in the potentially huge Chinese market.

State how you want to deal with questions.

• If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as we go along.
• Feel free to ask any questions.
• Perhaps we can leave any questions you have until the end?
• There will be plenty of time for questions at the end.

Of course, these are only suggestions and other language is possible. Even within this limited group of phrases, just choose a few you feel comfortable with and learn and use those.