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Q. In making the presentation, it is important to consider the delivery to the audience. State THREE guidelines which a speaker must follow when making an oral presentation.

An oral presentation is any spoken delivery that is organized for an audience. This means that it is structured and it has visual elements to hold the audience’s interest. Therefore, the oral presentation is very audience centered, so ensure that your answer focuses on the delivery of the presentation. Some possible considerations, when presenting to an audience, are how you use your voice, your physical behaviour on the stage, eye contact, and how you use your time. 1 mark is awarded for a clear statement of the guideline. Here are some possible answers to this question:

Possible Answers
  • Maintain eye contact - Maintaining eye contact ensures that the audience feels included in the presentation, so it increases the intimacy between the giver of the message and the receiver of the message. This increases (www.bulbsoup.com) audience engagement because it helps the presenter to gauge the audience’s interest, which builds a connection and, inevitably, ensures that the audience remains attentive.
  • Maintain a positive body language - This occurs when the presenter uses purposeful gestures to reinforce points and to keep the audience focused on you, the presenter. So, you should move with purpose, to emphasize transitions, and stand so that you, the presenter, can be seen and heard. These physical behaviours can also include dressing appropriately because it conveys professionalism, which leads to audience respect, and can boost the presenter’s confidence. This matters because credibility is increased, and the listeners remain engaged.
  • Stay within the allocated time - Staying within the allocated time is important because if your speech is too lengthy, your audience will become disinterested. So, it is important to control the time of your speech because this also helps with pacing. As the presenter, you have to slow down or speed up to emphasize points in order to keep the audience interested.
  • Use active delivery, not memorization - Active delivery is when you sound conversational, rather than scripted, or reading from a script. It is necessary to rehearse your speech in order to be able to speak eloquently and fluently during the presentation. This helps with the presentation because active delivery promotes vocal variety and pacing. This means that active delivery ensures that you naturally vary your speech, pitch and volume, which keeps your audience engaged.
  • Engage and adapt to your audience - In order to engage your audience, invite interactions with them and ask them questions. This keeps the audience involved with the content of the presentation. Adapt to the audience by tailoring the language that you use, as well as the examples, and watch for signs of confusion or disinterest so that adjustments can be made to your delivery to counteract this. The result of engaging and adapting to your audience is that your audience remains interested in the presentation.
  • Relevant content - When delivering a presentation to an audience, it is important that the content matches the audience. For example, if you are presenting to a group of 16 year old girls, the content must be different from the one that you are delivering to a group of third-year university students majoring in engineering. The difference in the level of knowledge and interest must be accounted for in order to maintain the interest of the audience. This is because irrelevant and overly complex materials, or the opposite, too simplistic information, can cause disengagement.
  • Use of visual aids - Visual aids are Google Slides, charts, videos, handouts, posters, PowerPoints and props. The advantage of using visual props in a presentation is that they reinforce the spoken word and make abstract ideas become more concrete, especially for visual learners. Generally, the use of visual aids helps to maintain the audience’s attention, especially in long presentations.​

Answer
​Contributor: Leisa Samuels-Thomas​​