Useful phrases and vocabulary

INTRODUCTION

Welcoming the audience

Good morning/afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Hello/Hi everyone.

First of all, let me thank you all for coming here today

It's a pleasure to welcome you today

I'm happy/delighted that so many of you could make It today

It's good to see you all here.

Introducing yourself

Let me Introduce myself I'm Ann Brown from ...

For those of you who don't know me, my name Is ...

Let me just start by introducing myself My name is ...

Giving your position, function, department, company

As some of you know, I'm the purchasing manager.

I'm the key account manager here and am responsible for...

I'm here In my function as the head of...

I'm the project manager in charge of...

Introducing your topic

What I'd like to present to you today is ...

I'm here today to present... Today's topic is...  

The subject/topic of my presentation is ...

In my presentation I would like to report on ...

In my talk I'll tell you about... Today I'm going to talk about...

I'll be talking about...

Saying why your topic is relevant for your audience

Today's topic is of particular interest to those of you/ us who ...

My talk Is particularly relevant to those of us who ...

My topic is/will be very important for you because ...

By the end of this talk you will be familiar with ...

Stating your purpose

The purpose/objective/aim of this presentation is to ...

Our goal is to determine how/the best way to ...

What I want to show you is ...

My objective is to ...

Today I'd like to give you an overview of...

Today I'll be showing you/reporting on ...

I'd like to update you on/inform you about...

During the next few hours we'll be ...

Structuring

I've divided my presentation Into three (main) parts.
In my presentation I'll focus on three major issues.

Sequencing

Point one deals with ..., point two ..., and point three...

First, I'll be looking at..., second ..., and third ...

I'll begin/start off by .... Then I'll move on to ...

Then/Next/After that...

I'll end with ...

Timing

My presentation will take about 30 minutes.
It will take about 20 minutes to cover these issues.
This won't take more than ...

Handouts

Does everybody have a handout/brochure/copy of the report? Please take one and pass them on.
Don't worry about taking notes. I've put all the important statistics on a handout for you.
I'll be handing out copies of the slides at the end of my talk.
I can email the PowerPoint presentation to anybody who wants it.

Questions

There will be time for questions after my presentation.
We will have about 10 minutes for questions in the question and answer period.
If you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me at any time.
Feel free to ask questions at any time during my talk.

EFFECTIVE OPENINGS

Rhetorical questions

Is market research important for brand development?
Do we really need quality assurance?

Interesting facts

According to an article I read recently,...
Did you know that... ?
I'd like to share an amazing fact/figure with you.

Stories and anecdotes

I remember when I attended a meeting in Paris,...
At a conference in Madrid, I was once asked the following question:...
Let me tell you what happened to me ...

Problem to think about

Suppose you wanted to .... How would you go about it?
Imagine you had to .... What would be your first step?


THE MIDDLE/MAIN PART

Saying what is coming

In this part of my presentation, I'd like to talk about ...

So, let me first give you a brief overview.

Indicating the end of a section

This brings me to the end of my first point.

So much for point two.

So, that's the background on ...

That's all I wanted to say about...

Summarizing a point

Before I move on, I'd like to recap the main points.

Let me briefly summarize the main issues.

I'd like to summarize what I've said so far...

Moving to the next point

This leads directly to my next point.

This brings us to the next question.

Let's now move on/turn to ...

After examining this point, let's turn to ...

Let's now take a look at...

Going back

As I said/mentioned earlier,...

Let me come back to what I said before ...

Let's go back to what we were discussing earlier.

As I've already explained,...

As I pointed out in the first section,...

Referring to other points

I have a question in connection with/concerning payment.

There are a few problems regarding the quality.

With respect/regard to planning, we need more background information. According to the survey, our customer service needs reviewing.

Adding ideas

In addition to this, I'd like to say that our IT business is going very well. Moreover/Furthermore, there are other interesting facts we should take a look at.

Apart from being too expensive, this model is too big.

Talking about (difficult) issues

I think we first need to identify the problem.

Of course we'll have to clarify a few points before we start.

We will have to deal with the problem of increasing prices.

How shall we cope with unfair business practices?

The question is: why don't we tackle the distribution problems?

If we don't solve this problem now, we'll get/run into serious trouble soon.

We will have to take care of this problem now.

We are currently having difficulties with ...

Rhetorical questions

What conclusion can we draw from this?

So, what does this mean?

So, just how good are the results?

So, how are we going to deal with this increase?

So, where do we go from here?

Why do I say that? Because ...

Do we really want to miss this opportunity to ...?

DESCRIBING VISUALS

Introducing a visual

Let's now look at the next slide which shows ...

To illustrate this, let's have a closer look at...

The chart on the following slide shows ...

I have a slide here that shows ...

The problem is illustrated in the next bar chart...

According to this graph, our net profit has doubled.

You can see the test results in this table.

As you can see here,...

Explaining a visual

First, let me quickly explain the graph.

You can see that different colours have been used to indicate...

The new models are listed across the bottom.

The biggest segment indicates ...

The key in the bottom left-hand corner...

Highlighting information

I'd like to stress/highlight/emphasize the following point(s).

I'd like to start by drawing your attention to ...

Let me point out that...

I think you'll be surprised to see that...

I'd like you to focus your attention on ...

What's really important here is ...

What I'd like to point out here is ...

Let's look more closely at...

Describing trends

Sales increased slightly in summer.

Consumer spending fell/declined sharply.

Interest rates have risen steadily.

Food prices went up significantly.

There was a sudden increase in prices.

In August, we saw a moderate fall.

This was followed by a gradual decline.

There was a sharp slump in sales.

Ticket sales have started picking up.

Explaining purpose

We introduced this method to increase flexibility.

 The purpose of this step is to expand to foreign markets.

Our aim was to ...

Explaining cause and effect

What's the reason for this drastic decrease?

The unexpected drop was caused by ...

This was because of...

As a consequence/Consequently, sales went up significantly

As a result...

The venture resulted in a sharp fall in share prices.

Our new strategy has led to an increase of 10%.