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Business Presentations: Referring to Visual Aids (Useful Language)

18 Sep 2024

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is certainly true of business presentations in which a graph, table or image can present a clear picture of what you want to say. Many people find it easier to understand information when it is presented visually, and visual aids are essential to most business presentations.

To create an effective presentation, it is important to strike the right balance between text and graphics. Text should be brief, and organised into bullet points for easier reading. You should use a combination of different kinds of graphics, such as images, graphs and pie diagrams, to keep your audience’s attention.

Every image or graph should be relevant to your topic. Never use an image just to brighten up your presentation.

You should also familiarise yourself with the operating system and projector well before your presentation, so that you do not have any technical difficulties during your presentation.

In this newsletter, we will look at how to use specific words and phrases to deal with persistent callers.

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Business Presentations: Referring to Visual Aids (Useful Language)

(includes lesson notes, sample dialogues, audio lesson + interactive practice exercises)

Referring to Slides and Graphics

Let’s take a look at the next slide.

Moving on to the next table…

As you can see from this graph…

As this diagram shows….

As this bar graph illustrates...

This chart indicates that…

Linking Visuals to Topic

As we saw in the previous slide…

This leads me to my next consideration.

The next slide will give you more information on this.

We’ll come back to these statistics later.

This point is illustrated by the diagram in front of you.

To demonstrate this point, I’d like to show you…

Using Prepositions to Describe Graphs

Sales peaked at…

From January to April,…

In the third quarter of the year…

Between the conception of the product and the launch…

There has been a rise in sales since November.

Turnover fell by ten per cent during....

Describing a Visual

Overall, the graph shows that…

The most striking pattern in the table is that…

As you can see, the percentage of production went up sharply.

As you can see from this bar chart…

Handling Interruptions During a Slideshow/Presentation

If you don’t mind, I’d just like to finish with this first.

I’ll give you more information on that in a moment.

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll get to it in a moment.

Let me just finish with this point first.

If you don’t mind, I’ll take questions at the end of this section.

Sorry, can I just finish with this point first?

Ending your Slideshow/Presentation

Thanks very much for your attention.

That’s all we have time for. Thanks for your attention.

That’s about it from me. Could we have the lights back on, please?

That about sums it up.

Inviting Questions

I’d be happy to take questions now.

I’m sure you have questions for me.

Can I answer any questions?

Would anyone like to ask a question?

Does anyone have any questions?

Accurately Writing Numbers as Words

03 Sep 2024

buswriting As a business writer, you will often have to write out numbers out as words. One of the most common tasks for everyone is having to write amounts on cheques in both numbers and words. But how many of you can write out a number, particularly a long number, accurately. The aim of this topic is to revise writing numbers as words accurately.

We've divided numbers into the following groups:

Cardinal Numbers
Ordinal Numbers
Decimal Numbers
Fractions and Percentages
Weights, Measures and Currencies

Cardinal Numbers

0	"oh", nought, zero
1	one
2	two
3	three
4	four
5	five
6	six
7	seven
8	eight
9	nine
10	ten
11	eleven
12	twelve
13	thirteen
14	fourteen
15	fifteen
16	sixteen
17	seventeen
18	eighteen
19	nineteen
20	twenty
21	twenty-one
22	twenty--two
30	thirty
31	thirty-one
32	thirty-two
100	one hundred
101	one hundred and one
102	one hundred and two
999	nine hundred and ninety-nine
1,000	one thousand
1,199	one thousand one hundred and ninety-nine
1,000,000	one million
5,000,000	five million
1000,000,000	a billion
1000,000,000,000	a trillion

Ordinal numbers

1st	first
2nd	second
3rd	third
4th	fourth
5ft	fifth, etc
17e etc	seventeenth
20th, 30th etc	twentieth, thirtieth etc
21st, 31st etc	twenty-first, thirty-first etc
22nd, 32nd etc	twenty-second, thirty-second etc
100th	hundredth
101st	hundred and first
1,000th	thousandth
1,000,000th	millionth

Decimal numbers

10.5 ten point five	10.58 ten point five eight
0.5	nought point five
0.05	nought point nought five
1.05	one point zero five

Fractions and percentages

1/2	a half
1/3	a third
2/3	two thirds
1/4	a quarter
3/4	three quarters
160/400	one hundred and sixty over four hundred
1/5	a fifth
1/10	a tenth
1/100	a hundredth
1/1000 etc	a thousandth etc
5%	five percent
5.4%	five point four percent

Weights, measures and currencies

1 cm	one centimetre
1.5 l	one and a half litres (or one point five litres)
1.7 l	one point seven litres
1.25 m	one meter twenty-five (or one and a quarter metres)
1.3 km	one point three kilometres
1.2 kg	one point two kilos
1.5 T	one and a half tons (or one point five tons)
$500	five hundred dollars
$6.80	six dollars eighty
$14.25	(on a cheque) fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents