Develop a rough presentation outline for a community presentation.

Select Your Materials

Now that you have an outline, you need to find and develop materials to include in the content of your presentation. You may want to collect things such as newspaper articles, quotes, reports, data, stories, and anecdotes to support your key points. Even for a 10- or 15-minute presentation, having this material available will help you prepare, and will serve as reference backing if audience members have questions for you.

Next, sort through this material and pick out the best items to use. What is most relevant here? What will best support and enhance your presentation?

Practice!

The content of your presentation is very important, and well worth spending extra time on. But equally important is the upcoming delivery of the presentation itself. The key to this is simple: practice. The more you practice, the more you will grow comfortable with the material, and the greater your impact will be.

Tips to help you practice effectively

• Practice in front of a mirror — you can see your facial expressions, gestures, and stance.
• Practice in front of others — family, friends, colleagues, and anyone else who will listen. A live rehearsal is one of the best forms of practice. Hopefully, your practice audience will give you constructive feedback to improve your presentation when the real thing comes.
• Practice reading aloud — and when you do, practice sounding relaxed and natural, not like you’re reading from a script.
• Practice breathing and relaxing — as silly as it may sound, when you are nervous, your breathing becomes shallow; this deprives you of oxygen and makes it harder to think clearly.
• Practice with a clock — do a practice run-through of your presentation for time, and see how close you are to the time available to you. You don’t want your presentation to be either too long or too short.

Upload your presentation in the last lesson of this course.