Step IV. Describing trends

OBJECTIVES: at this stage you are going to learn how to use visual aids for your presentation.

Visuals are important in any professional presentation. But when you give a presentation in a foreign language, they are even more important. Visual information is highly memorable and reduces the amount of talking you have to do.

Visuals help you to give a lot of information in a short space of time. They snapshot situations, developments, events and processes, which would take a long time to explain in words. Good visuals speak for themselves and require little or no description, but you often need to draw your audience's attention to one or more key points before you discuss them in more detail.

The frame in Annex 3 and the useful phrases from Table 2 may help you while presenting.

Table 2

Typical phrases to present visuals

Introduction and Explanation	Note which parts of the visual are most important	Take a look at this / Let's have a look at this / I'd like you to look at this. Here we can see ….. The …… represents …., and the ….. represents ……
Marking out and Comments	Explain why	I'd like us to look at ….. in more detail. As you can see …… I'd also like to draw your attention to …….. If you look at it more closely, you'll notice …….
Checking understanding and Interpretations	Check understanding of your results	I'm sure the results of this…. / the conclusions to be drawn from this…. are clear to all of us.

You don't need to know all the names of the different types of visual in order to present them. Simply say: Have a look at this. / Take a look at this. / As you can see, here... and here.... Note, that American English prefers take (take a look, take a shower, take a break). British English prefers have (have a look, have a shower, have a break).

Sometimes it is not enough to talk about increases and decreases. You need also to draw attention to the scale and speed of the change and comment on its significance [1, P. 20-25].

PRACTICE

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions:

1. What types of graphic aids do you remember?

2. There are a lot of different graphs and diagrams. Can you name them?

3. What sort of visuals do you regularly use in your studies?

4. What computer program will help you while showing the results of a survey?

5. Write a list of situations when it is necessary to use graphic aids? Why?

Exercise 2. Divide the visuals below into three groups: 1) graphs; 2) charts; 3) diagrams.

a) b)

Letters 1	Letters 2	Letters 3	Letters 4

c)

d)

f)

e)

Exercise 3. There are a lot of important verbs used to talk about change and development. Look at the drawings and try to remember which verb describes what tendency.

A .

increase, rise decrease, fall take off, shift up plunge, slump

B.

fluctuate; recover, pick up

Stabilize, level off; remain steady

C .

peak hit slow, bottom out

grow, expand shrink, decline

Exercise 4. Write out the following sentence fragments in the correct order to make complete presentation extracts.

1. sее, it's a fairly typical growth

2. Have a look at

3. stages of its development. The vertical axis

4. and the horizontal

5. this graph. As you can

6. shows freight turnover in tons per year

7. curve for the RZD company in the early

8. axis represents the years 2000 to 2009

1. productivity of our domestic

2. levels in China, shown

3. looking at very clearly

4. plants, and gives you some

5. The graph we're

6. here, exceed the rest

7. idea of how far production

8. demonstrates the comparative

1. products. Let's take a closer

2. which shows the current

3. growth sector

4. I'd like you

5. position of six of our leading

6. movement in the high

7. to look at this chart,

8. look for a moment at product

Exercise 5. These word combinations can be used to express important information in a visual. Complete the table using the following words: