4 Tips for Crafting Great Speeches and Presentations

(This video is sponsored by Skillshare)

If you need to deliver a presentation in front of an audience, you might as well put in the work to nail it. In this video, I'll share 4 tips for improving your presentations, along with examples from John Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, the head curator of TED, and more.

My book "10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades" is completely free, so check it out if you're interested in improving your grades!

Examples from the video:

----------

Videos you might want to watch next:

----------

If you want to get even more strategies and tips on becoming a more productive, successful student, subscribe to my channel right here:

~ created by Thomas Frank

STUFF PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK ME ABOUT

[yamerabufakher]

tip1 the idea
tip2 storytelling (1 character.2 conflict or problem. 3 satisfying solution or ending that fits back to the idea)
tip3 analogies and metaphor
tip4 audience interaction

[alejandrolopezharo]

The best talk I've ever been in was one about car crashes. At first I thought I was gonna be the same old boring facts. And at first it was. Then she started telling what we thought was a made-up story about some kids. The speech was about to finish when she said the last punchline: those kids, were my sons. She ended the speech talking trying to convince us not to do it because of how damaged her family was. It was awesome.

[Starfish]

How to give a speech: logos (logic), pathos (emotion), and ethos (ethics).
Great video!

[juanibarra]

*Darn it, I just gave a presentation 3 hours ago, but thanks*

[sebastianloratv]

Amazing! I teach this for a living and got new insights from your video. Thank a lot.

[annah.]

As someone who has to give two presentations in the next week.. THANK YOU.

[Joel-jsgk]

Great video Thomas! I think there are a few further pieces of advice when it comes to giving presentations:

1) If you get to choose your topic, choose something that you're genuinely passionate about, something you love to talk about. If you, the speaker, don't even find what you're talking about interesting it's very difficult to convince the audience that it is.

2) Mix it up a bit. Don't just stand there are talk for your whole presentation; if possible, include video examples, show drawings yourself (if you have easy access to a blackboard or something of the like) and ask the audience questions. Get creative.

3) If you're using powerpoint slides and using a projector for the class/audience to see them, don't include a lot of info on each slide. Maybe 1 or 2 sentences, but no more. This is because if you have everything you intend on talking about in your slides, then the audience might get caught up in reading them, and you could end up just reading, which is never a recipe for success. Have 1 or 2 sentences and some pictures/short videos/visual examples.
You should know what you're talking about inside out by the time your presentation date comes around, so including a lot of information on your slides shouldn't be necessary.

I did a presentation on the Theory of Relativity in French (my 2nd language) the other day. Haven't gotten my result back yet but feeling pretty good about it

[SomethingNick]

In my engineering degree they make part of our assessment a fortnightly presentation on our course work, I hated it at the time but now I'm really thankful for the confidence it gave me. Some of the guys at my work obviously struggle talking in front of crowds of people but I don't even think about it anymore.

I literally had a class an hour ago in which all students had to present seminars on all the orders of mammals, and we were discussing techniques of effective speech delivery.

It was shocking that basically none of the students had practiced before-hand, they just made the powerpoint presentation and did not bother to go through it once.

I made the effort to practice the whole seminar a couple of times, but I really left a whole lot of 'go-to' techniques mentioned in this video, mainly starting with a story and audience interaction. And it seems so obvious that watching TV is a good way to analyse effective communication, but I really have not thought about it before

I have added this video to my reference list in Trello, I'll be sure to rewatch it before my next presentation in a few months. Great work, Thomas, keep doing what you are doing.

[BryceDoesLife]

Ok but also Thumbs up for a video on how Thomas makes videos like maybe not the super nitty gritty editing stuff (but also yes) but like the writing filming and rough editing process? Or may me like a series?

[cryptoguy]

Nothing better than a video by frank on a friday 1 week before a presentation... life saver this man is.

[SiimLand]

It's not what you say but how you say it that gets the audience hooked.

[leanabath]

i love how when i go to listen to you i know its going to be informative, understandable and to the point!! you dont mess about making me wonder where i should skip to to get to the meat

[yjyujful]

Hi Tom, can you prepare a video on how to write an outstanding essay? Would be willing to hear about the structure of arguments and how to incorporate them the right way into the paragraph. In addition, it would be useful to hear how to make short informative summaries on the given data from graphs and tables and how to compare presented information in 2 or even more of them the best possible way. All of that could complement maybe a separate video on how to prepare an excellent scientific article (medical would be a preference) :)

[KazeyKudo]

Even though I gave a presentation last week, I have 2 more coming up next week that are very important so the timing can't be any better! Thanks

[cobia]

Almost 3 years later this is still an excellent video. Thank you

[stanleyadrian_]

It's 2020, found this video when I needed the boost for my presentation next week. Even though it's been 3 years, I still find this really useful! Thanks, Frank!

[coreycox]

I was lucky to find my topic exciting. Oddly, I think that my best talks were when I knew my subject inside out and then winged it.The key to this being easy is to do it hundreds of times. The Big Short was well written to explain some material that is important but boring to learn. Good example.

[BrandonScheepers]

I literally had a career plan proposal yesterday 😂 I came third and I'm through to the finals. Glad you posted this video, couldn't have come at a better time 👌

[DrewTJackson]

Great insight on when to open with a story and when to not. I speak regularly and use stories regularly and I don't want to use them as a crutch. Thanks man!