UNIT 4. Let’s Look at This Slide…

Exercise 4.1. Now, read the text about visual aids.

To be effective a good visual must focus on only a few points. It’s important not to have too much information on one slide. Slide overload is bad because people will then spend time reading the slide rather than listening to the presenter. A slide must be readable. If the audience can’t read the slide, they will soon give up. That’s why font size is very important. It should be as large as possible. And sometimes it’s also a good idea to use different colors to highlight some points. Using many different colors can be confusing though.

It is good to use the rule of six which mean:

ü a maximum of six lines per slide

ü a maximum of six words per line

If you stick to this rule, you won’t risk overloading your charts with too much information.

The presenter is the focus of the presentation – not the visuals. The key purpose for using visual aid is to help the audience understand the topic better. So the visuals should only be used to support the presenter’s message. If a visual distracts the audience’s attention from what you are saying, it’s useless.

What you say and what you show should always go together 100%. So when you’re not talking about the slide, it shouldn’t be visible. It’s very important that the presenter speaks to the audience and doesn’t read to them. The speaker must make eye-contact and not watch the monitor or screen while he or she is talking. It’s extremely boring when someone just reads slides word for word as if it were an essay or something.

During a presentation we can use different kinds of visuals:

§ a bar chart

§ a table

§ a technical drawing

§ a map

§ a graph

§ a pie chart

§ organizational chart

The first rule of preparing effective visuals is that they should be clear and easy for the audience to follow. Sometimes it is necessary to explain a more complicated visual and it is always necessary to point out the most important information.

· Say if the following sentences are true or false.