Hello.

This week, we will focus on the language of your presentation.

And let's begin with the very important distinction between written and

spoken language.

Happened just yesterday, somebody came to me and asked me, Alexei,

should I write down the whole speech of my presentation?

And the general answer would be no.

Do not write down and memorize or read your full text,

because then your presentation will sound like what it is, a recited written text.

I'm sounding a bit like I'm reading a written text at the moment which I am.

However, there are important exceptions to that general rule.

I suppose you should be writing the text of you speech if you are planning to read

the text of your speech.

And sometimes this is a very sensible thing to do.

For example, if you are presenting at a high stakes event,

if this is the chance of your life.

Suppose you were invited to speak At TED and

they understand that present Bt TED do write,

and rehearse, and memorize by heart their speeches.

Because you see, the TED presentation is not a presentation.

It's a film where you are the actor and actors of course

have their texts written by script writers and then memorized.

Right.

If you are speaking at a very formal event like for example, wedding,

funeral, maybe you have to write your text.

If it's in a foreign language, like for

example, I am speaking at the moment, in a foreign language.

And sometimes it is a good thing to just write down the text of your speech and

not stumble at every second word like I sometimes do.

If the speech is short, like under 15 minutes,

it makes sense to just put it all in writing.

And finally, if you want to improve your presentation before you go and

present it, it's actually a very sensible thing to do to just

write the whole text and to work with it.

So there.

Sometimes writing is a good thing to do.

Now the dress code of the event is typically a good

indicator of whether you should be writing the text of a speech or not.

If you're attending a black tie or a white tie event,

it's very likely you'll have to write the text of the speech.

If the audience is wearing ties, quite possibly.

And if the dress code is less formal,

it's very unlikely and it will be out of context for you to read your speech or

to recite a speech which was rehearsed, memorized by heart.

At TED, they have this quite strict, no title rule.

And don't read your talk.

Notes are fine though.

But if the choice is between reading and rambling, then read.

So the choice is your's, of course.

Why not, on the other hand, why not read and write the text?

It does take a lot of time and secondly, and more importantly,

it does put your brain into that writing mode.

Whether you're writing with a pen and

paper or you're using a computer word processing program.

You will start writing and

the text will look like a written text.

Now what's the problem with written text?

Let me read you a sample of written text.

According to Baddeley (1986) and Cowan (1195),

when information is activated (by presentation of that information or

an associate of it) it stays activated automatically for

a short period of time E.G., 2 to 30 seconds, decaying from

activation unless it is reactivated during that period through additional,

related stimulus presentations or thought process.

Well, this was just one very long sentence with lots, and lots of brackets.

Very hard to read and very hard to understand.

And this is the problem with written text.

This, on the other hand, is a spoken text.

And see the difference.

Let me get into my Al Gore mode.

Now, as I said, they can also measure temperature.

Here is what the temperature has been on Earth.

He's pointing at the chart at this moment.

One thing that kind of jumps out to you is, let me put it this way.

When there is more carbon dioxide,

the temperature gets warmer because it traps more heat from the sun inside.

Totally different, right, much more easier to understand.

Another example, from the same Al Gore,

we must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and

resolve that has previously been only when nations mobilize for war.

These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th

hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope, and

readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge.

[LAUGH] Totally different, right?

What has just happened to Al Gore?

Well you see the problem is that this is his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

And much more formal context.

And therefore, he had to sit down and write his whole speech, and

he did, got, I don't know if he did this himself or

with a speech writer, but he did get into this written

language mode much harder to read, much harder to understand.

Written language is different.

It's much more formal.

It's more pompous.

It's complex, it's very hard to understand both here and there.

It's overcorrect, it's too grammatically correct and politically correct as well.

And above all, is inauthentic, it's very difficult for

the audience to believe that the speaker actually means what he says at the moment.

And this is precisely the thing that we are trying to avoid.

Now, presentations are often boring, confusing, and unconvincing.

And sometimes that happens,

because the language is just a little bit too formal for the occasion.

This is an excerpt from the presentation by Justin Denison.

He works for Samsung.

The pixel density of the S6 display has been increased

by 11% versus Note 4, giving you a richer visual experience with crisper images.

Now this sentence is not too long but there's something wrong with it.

We may be having a hard time pointing what exactly it is.

But it's a little bit too formal and this is what we're trying to avoid.

We're trying to make our presentations more interesting,

more easy to understand, and more convincing.

And I know that at certain point of time formal language

was convincing, but not anymore.

What I've notice about 10 years ago that we don't speak as we write anymore.

We starts to write as we speak.

Let's have a look at this piece from a book.

Amazon worked so hard, harder than almost any company in history,

to provide amazing service.

They so exceeded expectations that their

customers started to tell themselves a story about Amazon.

As a result, it's now easier, not harder, for

Amazon to maintain its amazing reputation.

It's a written text from a book.

But it's so easy to read, it sounds like an oral presentation.

And this is what is happening with books.

When I was signing a contract with my publisher, they specifically asked me

to write my book in what they call a conversational style,

not formal, not academic, but rather conversational.

And of course, we are trying to be conversational in our presentation.

Also, this part is not about using something what they

call rhetorical devices.

I don't know if you know what it is, but if you Google, you will end up with

a list like this, which will be full of Greek words,

which I find largely irrelevant in today's context.

From my experience, I never seen any business executive sitting and

going, should I use Antanagoge or Asyndeton.

This is probably a bunch of very impressive words.

But what they are mostly used for, they are used for decoration.

And this course is not about decoration.

We're not trying to make our presentations pretty.

We are trying to make them simple, concrete, powerful, or

powerless, by the way sometimes this is a good idea.

We're trying to make them engaging and

maybe we're trying to make them occasionally funny.

And this is what this part is about.

Written and spoken language

Presentation skills: Speechwriting and Storytelling

Meet the Instructors