Who doesn’t love a great talk or presentation?
It is better to listen to a good storyteller than nods endlessly to jargons and long running sentences that you can barely grasp its story. Of course, you, as an audience, expect the speaker to give a great presentation. And for the speaker, now that’s a hard part. It is true that presentation is a skill that you can practice by yourself. However, to be a good speaker and storyteller, you need to know what the DOs and DON’Ts are instead of going blindly and hope for the best.
We found an article written by Itai Yanai: How to give a bad talk. Yanai gave seven examples of what a bad talk looks like. And the first point just hits right to our brain – Begin the presentation by putting some slides together. That seems like the first thing you should do, right? ‘No!’, that’s Yanai’s first word.
Now, before we jump to the conclusion, let’s hear the explanation from Yanai. Yanai said that you, the speaker, should spend your effort in thinking about three things: who your audience is, what kind of the common background that they have, and what the point is that you want to communicate with them. All right, what do they have anything to with ‘Do not be begin the presentation by putting some slides together’?
Yanai stated that though creating presentation slides is part of the process, you should firstly develop your story through your points, either write them down on papers or text editor programmes; even taking a walk or talking to your friends also help shaping your presentation. When you finish your story, start creating slide. ‘It is not procrastinating – this is the actual work’ said Yanai.
We recommend you check Yanai’s article out by following this link: http://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-026-00954-8. You will surely (and probably) never give a bad talk ever again.
