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Making an effective presentation
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An effective presentation should have an impressive introduction. Clear and confident start is very important to effective presentation. Though introduction is a relatively short part of a presentation its structure is enough complicated. Here you can find four easy steps to make an effective introduction:
1) greet the audience and introduce yourself,
2) introduce the subject of the presentation,
3) explain the purpose in making this report to the audience,
4) give the “menu” of the main points you are going to speak about,
If you want your audience to listen to you, you should create comfortable
atmosphere to get the attention of your audience, you need strategies to make you introduction not only clear but catching. Presenters can use different techniques to get their audience’s attention at the start of a presentation, for example, to make the opening sentence of the presentation interesting, to give an interesting or an amazing fact or statistic, to tell a personal story or a joke, to ask the audience a question, to state a problem, to show why your presentation is especially interesting or relevant for this audience.
Ex.18. Work in groups of two or three. Prepare a five-minute presentation on a company owned, controlled, and operated by members of one or several families. Speak about the problems they have or have had, and the success they achieved.
Pay special attention to the beginning of the presentation. Practise your presentation, then make your presentation to the other groups.
The phrases below can be useful for organizing the introduction of your presentation.
Introducing yourself
- On behalf of myself and ……, I’d like to welcome you. My name's …….
- Hi, I’m …… Good to see you all.
- Good morning everyone. Let me introduce myself. My name is...
- I am a specialist in...
Introducing the topic
- This morning I’d like to outline the campaign concept we've developed for you.
- I’m going to tell you about the ideas we’ve come up with for the ad campaign.
3. Giving the “menu”
- I’ve divided my presentation into three parts.
- I'm going to divide my talk into four parts.
- First I'll give you...; after that...; finally...
Inviting questions
- If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to interrupt me.
- If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
- If you're not clear about anything, go ahead and ask any questions you want.
UNIT 4
BUSINESS ETHICS [5]
Key points
You, the reader, have already made decisions that involve business ethics. Perhaps you have tried to sell your old car or a second-hand fridge: do you point out to the buyer that the clutch is wearing or do you wait until you are asked, or when you are asked you don’t tell the truth? Have you refused to buy a country’s product because you object to its politics?
Points to discuss
1. What is business ethics?
2. What rules guide business?
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3. What principles should a businessman have?
4. When conducting a business is it possible to be decent, honest, frank, moral?
Reading
Ex.1. Read this story about a successful businessman and continue the story. Describe what could happen when Mr. Boggis returned to the house?
PARSON’S PLEASURE
By Roald Dahl
Mr Boggis stopped the car, got out and looked around. It was perfect. He could see for miles.
Over on the right he spotted a medium farmhouse and there were two farms on the left. By trade a dealer in antique furniture, with a shop in the King’s Road, Chelsea, Boggis had achieved a considerable reputation by producing unusual items with astonishing regularity. When asked where he got them, he would wink and murmur something about a little secret.
Boggis’s little secret was a result of something that happened on a Sunday afternoon nearly nine years before, while he was driving in the country. The car had overheated and he had walked to a farm-house to ask for a jug of water.
While he was waiting for it, he glanced through the door and spotted a large oak armchair. The back panel was decorated by an inlay of the most delicate floral design. Good God, he thought. This thing is late seventeenth century!
He poked his head in further. There was another one on the other side of the fireplace! Two chairs like that must be worth at least a thousand pounds in London.
When the woman of the house returned, Boggis asked if she would like to sell her chairs. They weren’t for sale, she said, but just out of curiosity, how much would he give? They bargained for half an hour, and in the end, Boggis got the chairs for less than a twentieth of their value.
Returning to London in his station-wagon, Boggis had an idea. If there was good stuff in one farmhouse, why not in others? On Sundays, why couldn’t he comb the countryside? But country folk are a suspicious lot. Perhaps it would be best if he didn’t let them know he was a dealer. He could be the telephone man, the plumber, the gas inspector. He could even be a clergyman…
The scheme worked. In fact, it became a lucrative business.
And now it was another Sunday. At this moment he was disguised as a clergyman. Boggis parked some distance from the gates of his first house. He never liked his car to be seen until a deal was made. An old clergyman and a large station-wagon never seemed quite right together.
But there was nothing of value in the house.
At the next stop, no one was home. The third, a farmhouse, was back in the fields. It looked dirty. He didn’t hold out much hope for it.
Three men were standing in the yard. When they caught sight of the small, man in his black suit and parson’s collar, they stopped talking and watched him suspiciously. The farm owner’s name was Rummins. The tall youth beside him was his son Bert. The short man with broad shoulders was Claud, a neighbour.
“And what exactly might you be wanting?” Rummins asked.
Boggis explained that his aim was to help not very rich people to get rid of their old furniture.
“We don’t have any”, said Rummins. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Now just a minute, sir”, Boggis said, raising a finger. “The last man who said that to me was an old farmer down in Sussex, and when he finally let me into his house, d’you know what I found? A dirty-looking old chair in the kitchen that turned out to be worth four hundred pounds! I showed him how to sell it, and he bought himself a new tractor with the money.”
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“Well”, Rummins said, “there’s no harm in you taking a look.” He led him into a living-room.
And there it was! Boggis saw it at once and gasped. He stood staring for ten seconds at least, not daring to believe what he saw before him. It couldn’t be true!
At that point, Boggis became aware of the three men watching him. They had seen him gasp and stare. Boggis staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, breathing heavily.
“What’s the matter?” Claud asked.
“It’s nothing”, he gasped. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“I thought maybe you were looking at something”, Rummins said.
“No, no”, Boggis said. “It’s just my heart. It happens every now and then. I’ll be all right.”
He must have time to think, he told himself. Take it gently, Boggis. Keep calm. These people may be ignorant but they are not stupid.
It was a dealer’s dream. Boggis knew that it was an example of eighteenth century English furniture known as “The Chippendale Commodes”.
Boggis began to move around the room examining the other furniture, one piece at a time. Apart from the commode it was a very poor lot.
“Nice oak table”, he said. “Not old enough to be of any interest. This chest of drawers” – Boggis walked casually past the commode – “worth a few pounds, I dare say. A crude reproduction, I’m afraid.”
“That’s a strong bit of furniture”, Rummins said. “Some nice carving on it too.”
“Machine-carved”, Boggis replied, bending down to examine the exquisite craftsmanship. “You know what?” he said, looking back at the commode. “I’ve wanted a set of legs something like that for a long time. I’ve got a table in my own home, and when I moved house, the movers damaged the legs. I’m very fond of that table. I keep my Bible on it.”
He paused, stroking his chin. “These legs on your chest of drawers could be cut off and fixed on to my table.”
“What you mean to say is you’d like to buy it”, Rummins said.
“Well … it might be a bit too much trouble. It’s not worth it.”
“How much were you thinking of offering?” Rummins asked.
“Not much, I’m afraid. You see, this is not a genuine antique.”
“I’m not so sure”, Rummins said. “It’s been in here over 20 years. I bought it at the Manor House when the old Squire died. Bert, where’s that old bill you once found at the back of one of the drawers?”
“You mean this?” Bert lifted out a piece of folded yellow paper from one of the drawers and carried it over to his father.
Boggis was fighting to suppress his excitement. With the invoice, the value had climbed even higher. Twelve thousand pounds? Fourteen? Maybe fifteen or even twenty?
He tossed the paper on to the table and said quietly, “It’s exactly what I thought, a Victorian reproduction. This is simply the invoice that the seller gave to his client.”
“Listen, Parson”, Rummins said, “how can you be so sure it’s a fake? You haven’t even seen it underneath all that paint.”
“Has anyone got a knife?” asked Boggis.
Claud produced a pocket-knife. Working with apparent casualness, Boggis began chipping the paint off a small area on top of the commode. “Take a look.”
It was beautiful – a warm little patch of mahogany glowing like a topaz, rich and dark with the true colour of its two hundred years.
“What’s wrong with it?” Rummins asked.
“It’s processed! Without the slightest doubt this wood has been processed with lime. That’s what they use for mahogany, to give it that dark aged colour”. “How much would you give?” Rummins asked.
Boggis looked at the commode, frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. “I think ten pounds would be fair.”
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“Ten pounds!” Rummins cried. “Don’t be ridiculous, Parson. It’s antique, it’s worth double!”
“If you’ll pardon me, no, sir, it’s not. It’s a second-hand reproduction. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll go as high as fifteen pounds.”
“Make it fifty”, Rummins said.
“My dear man”, Boggis said softly, “I only want the legs. The rest of it is firewood, that’s all.”
“Make it thirty-five”, Rummins said.
“I couldn’t sir, I couldn’t! I’ll make you one final offer. Twenty pounds.”
“I’ll take it”, Rummins snapped.
“Oh, dear”, Boggis said. “I shouldn’t have started this.”
“You can’t back out now, Parson. A deal’s a deal.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Perhaps if I got my car, you gentlemen would be kind enough to help me load it?”
Boggis found it difficult not to break into a run. But clergymen never run; they walk slowly.
Back in the farmhouse, Rummins was saying, “Fancy him giving me twenty pound for a load of junk like this.”
“You did very nicely, Mr Rummins”, Claud told him. “You think he’ll pay you?”
“We don’t put it in the car till he do.”
“And what if it won’t go in the car?” Claud asked. “He’ll just say to hell with it and drive off.”
Rummins paused to consider this alarming prospect.
“I’ve got an idea”, Claud went on. “He told us that it was only the legs he was wanting. So all we’ve got to do is cut ’em off, then it’ll be sure to go in the car. All we’re doing is saving him the trouble of cutting them off when he gets home.”
“A bloody good idea”, Rummins said, looking at the commode. Within a couple of minutes, Claud and Bert had carried the commode outside and Claud went to work with the saw. When all the legs were severed, Bert arranged them carefully in a row.
Claud stepped back to survey the results. “Just let me ask you one question, Mr Rummins”, he said slowly. “Even now, could you put that enormous think into a car?”
“Not unless it was a van.”
“Correct!” Claud cried. “And parsons don’t have vans. All they’ve got usually is little Morris Eights or Austin Sevens.”
“The legs is all he wants”, Rummins said. “If the rest of it won’t go in, then he can leave it. He can’t complain. He’s got the legs.”
“You know damn well he’s going to start knocking the price if he don’t get every single bit of this into the car. So why don’t we give him his firewood now and be done with it”, Claud said patiently.
“Fair enough”, Rummins said. “Bert, fetch the axe.”
It was hard work, and it took several minutes before Claud had the whole think more or less smashed to pieces. “I’ll tell you one thing”, he said straightening up, wiping his brow. “That was a bloody good carpenter put this job together and I don’t care what the parson says.”
“We’re just in time!” Rummins called out. “Here he comes!”
♦
Ex.2. Read the text again and answer the questions.
1. Who was Mr. Boggis by trade?
2. What was Mr. Boggis little secret?
3. Why was Mr. Boggis disguised as a clergyman?
4. What did he find in Rummin’s hause?
5. How did Mr. boggis try to knock down prices?
6. How did Rummis, Bert and Claud “help” Mr. Boggis?
7. Do you sympathize with anyone in the story? If yes, then who do you
sympathize with and why?
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