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One of the key things you will be expected to do is to organise and present your information in a highly structured and purposeful way. You must be clear about the points you wish to make and how you intend to make them. This will ensure that your presentation is interesting and informative and, most importantly, that your audience is left with the feeling that they have learnt something new. This is why planning your presentation beforehand is so important. If you stumble and waffle because you don’t know what to say next, not only will your audience lose interest but you will also lose marks.

The structure of your presentation is extremely important. When you write your presentation, it needs to be written as a series of paragraphs, in which one point leads onto the next. You should also include an introduction and a conclusion. However, you should remember that writing these paragraphs forms part of your research. When you make your actual presentation, you will not be able to read the paragraphs from a piece of paper. Once you know the contents of the paragraphs you can use key words on cue cards as prompts. Below is an example of a suggested structure that you can use for your presentation regardless of the topic you have chosen.

Introduction

Here you should introduce your chosen topic and explain why it is important to you. You should also include a few brief facts about your topic in order to encourage the interest of the audience.

Paragraphs one - five

These paragraphs will form the main body of your presentation. In this section you should include some of the interesting information that you have discovered in your research. You should aim to cover at least five main points about your topic, providing interesting facts, anecdotes, statistics and pieces of evidence to add interest to the points you are making.

Conclusion

In the conclusion you should briefly sum up all the main points you have made and thank your audience for listening. You should also ask if any audience members have any questions they would like to ask.

You might like to think about some possible sentences starters to help highlight for your audience when you are beginning to discuss a new point. Some examples are:

• it is also interesting to note...
• another interesting fact about... is...
• I have always enjoyed... because...
• some people believe that...
• it is possible to say that...
• when I am... I also feel...
• there is no doubt that...

You are allowed to use software such as PowerPoint to enhance your presentation, but remember that it is only there to add interest to what you say. There is nothing worse than someone giving a presentation which they simply read from PowerPoint slides. If this were to happen you would lose marks. You could include diagrams, illustrations or key facts in your PowerPoint document to support your presentation. You might also have in front of you an object related to the topic of your presentation. For example, if you were making a presentation on the topic of leisure, you could use a medal you have won for a sporting event. If you were talking about Wales, you might show your audience a book of Dylan Thomas’ poetry.