Connect with your audience using inclusive language
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:13 am
Whilst plain language will make your content easier to understand and remember, there’s more to consider when writing your script. Firstly, make sure to avoid unconscious biases, slang and expressions that could discriminate groups of people based on ability, gender, or socioeconomic status. For example, opt for ‘they’ ‘them’ or ‘their’ when a person’s gender is unknown or unclear, and replace gendered terms like ‘salesman’ with gender neutral terms like ‘salesperson’ instead.
You should also pay attention to how you talk phone number cyprus about any important visuals on your slide. Your audience may struggle to see your slides clearly either due to visual impairments, or situational factors like sitting at the back of the room or using a low-quality computer screen. Make sure to describe visuals in a way that means your audience members can get the equivalent information and context just from listening to your presentation. When talking about something like a chart or diagram, don’t refer to elements only by their colour or position – e.g. ‘the red line’ – as people with certain visual impairments such as colour vision deficiency may not be able to understand.
Give your audience time to think
The next tip is to carefully consider the pace of your presentation. When people watch recorded videos they can usually adjust the speed or pause and rewind when they need to. However, as a live presenter you need to find a balance between making sure your audience can keep up with what you’re saying and going quick enough to prevent your audience disengaging. Practice your presentation out loud, paying particular attention to how quickly you’re speaking.
Another great technique is to use strategic pauses to make sure that you give your audience enough time to think and process the information that you’re presenting. Strategic pauses, if only for a second or two, are an important part of helping your audience better understand what you’re saying. Though it might feel awkward to stop speaking for a couple seconds when you’re presenting, it doesn’t sound awkward to an audience. Practice pausing and the end of every slide and when you introduce visual information like charts and graphs that your audience may need time to digest.
You should also pay attention to how you talk phone number cyprus about any important visuals on your slide. Your audience may struggle to see your slides clearly either due to visual impairments, or situational factors like sitting at the back of the room or using a low-quality computer screen. Make sure to describe visuals in a way that means your audience members can get the equivalent information and context just from listening to your presentation. When talking about something like a chart or diagram, don’t refer to elements only by their colour or position – e.g. ‘the red line’ – as people with certain visual impairments such as colour vision deficiency may not be able to understand.
Give your audience time to think
The next tip is to carefully consider the pace of your presentation. When people watch recorded videos they can usually adjust the speed or pause and rewind when they need to. However, as a live presenter you need to find a balance between making sure your audience can keep up with what you’re saying and going quick enough to prevent your audience disengaging. Practice your presentation out loud, paying particular attention to how quickly you’re speaking.
Another great technique is to use strategic pauses to make sure that you give your audience enough time to think and process the information that you’re presenting. Strategic pauses, if only for a second or two, are an important part of helping your audience better understand what you’re saying. Though it might feel awkward to stop speaking for a couple seconds when you’re presenting, it doesn’t sound awkward to an audience. Practice pausing and the end of every slide and when you introduce visual information like charts and graphs that your audience may need time to digest.