Umiejętności komunikacji ustnej
Język angielski w zastosowaniu zawodowym
Structure and rationale
A presentation is not a recital of slides. It is an attempt to change what someone in the room thinks or does. Everything else — the structure, the slides, the language — serves that one goal. If at the end of your five minutes nobody can name the action you wanted them to take, the presentation has failed regardless of how polished the delivery felt.
The headline rule
Your first sentence is your most valuable resource. Spend it on a finding, a number, and a promise of structure — not on apology, throat-clearing, or thanks.
| Opening | Effect |
|---|---|
| “Thank you for having me. Today I’d like to talk a little bit about our quarterly results, and before I start…” | Apologetic, vague; the audience drifts before sentence three. |
| “Our churn has risen from 12% to 27% in two quarters — and in five minutes I’ll show you why, and what I think we should do about it.” | A finding, a number, and a promise of structure — all in the first breath. |
Three structures, one principle
| Shape | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Inverted pyramid | Senior audience, short slot. Headline first, then evidence, then caveats. |
| Pyramid | Audience that needs context. Set up the problem, then resolve it with the conclusion. |
| Hourglass | Mixed audience. Open broad, narrow to a finding, broaden to implications. |
The principle behind all three: the audience should never be guessing where you are in the talk. Signposting — “first… second… finally…“ — is navigation, not stylistic decoration.
Slides, voice, and signposts
Slides that help, slides that hurt
A bad slide makes the audience read instead of listen. A good slide gives the audience something to look at while they listen. Three rules cover most cases:
- One idea per slide. If a slide carries two arguments, split it.
- Six lines of text, maximum. More than that and you are writing a memo, not a slide.
- One chart per data slide, with an active title. “Q3 revenue by region” is a label. “Czechia drove all of Q3’s growth” is a slide.
If your slides could be read silently and convey the same message, you don’t need to be in the room. Always make slide and speaker do work the other cannot.
Visual hierarchy
The audience’s eye lands on the brightest, biggest, boldest thing first. Use that.
- Active title at the top. Bold, large, communicates the conclusion.
- One thing in colour. Everything else in grey.
- Source at the bottom. Small, italic, grey. Necessary but not loud.
- No 3D, no shadows, no gradients. They distract; they don’t inform.
If you take only one habit from this section: start every slide in greyscale, then add colour deliberately. This single discipline solves half of all bad slides.
Pace, voice, and silence
| Element | Target |
|---|---|
| Pace | ~140 words per minute. Faster and the audience cannot follow; slower and they tune out. |
| Voice | Drop pitch slightly at the end of statements; raise it at questions. Polish-as-L1 speakers default to a flat declarative line in English; small variation in pitch sounds vastly more confident. |
| Silence | A two-second pause after a key number is the most effective emphasis tool you have. “Um” fills silence with nothing; saying nothing fills it with the audience’s attention. |
Q&A as part of the talk
The questions are not a separate event. They are part of the presentation, and often where the real persuasion happens.
- Repeat or paraphrase the question. “The question is whether the projection holds in a downturn…“ This buys you time, confirms understanding, and lets the rest of the room hear the question.
- Bridge to your message. “That’s a useful angle. The underlying point is…“ You are not avoiding the question; you are answering on your terms.
- It is fine to say you don’t know. “I don’t have that figure to hand — I’ll send it through this afternoon” is far stronger than improvising a number you cannot defend.
What to avoid
| Phrase | Why to cut |
|---|---|
| “Sorry, this slide is a bit busy…“ | If it’s busy, fix it before the meeting. |
| “As you can see…“ | The audience cannot see; that is your job. |
| “I’ll skip this slide…“ | Then why is it there? Cut it. |
| “Just one more thing…“ | You committed to a time. Respect it. |
| Reading the slide aloud | The audience can read. |
| Apologies in the opening or closing | Unearned weakness; never recover. |
Transitions between slides
Most people simply walk to the next slide. Better speakers tell you why.
| Function | Phrase |
|---|---|
| Continuation | “Building on this…“ / “Which brings me to…“ |
| Contrast | “The picture changes when we look at…“ |
| Causation | “This explains why…“ / “As a consequence…“ |
| Zooming in | “Let’s look at one of these regions in detail.” |
| Zooming out | “Stepping back, the broader pattern is…“ |
| Surprise | “Now, the next slide is the one that surprised us.” |
A signposted transition gives the audience permission to forget the previous slide and focus on the next one. Without it, they are still chewing on slide three when you are halfway through slide four.
Closing
Your last sentence is your second-most valuable resource. End with the action, not with thanks.
| Closing | Effect |
|---|---|
| “That’s all I have. Thank you. Any questions?“ | No reinforcement, no ask. The audience leaves remembering nothing in particular. |
| “If we move the launch date to September, we’ll capture the back-to-school window and protect a 12% revenue uplift. I’d like ten minutes at next week’s exec to agree the date. Now — what questions do you have?“ | First conditional projects the outcome; the ask is specific; the Q&A invitation is open and confident. |
A four-point pre-flight checklist
Before any presentation, ask:
- What is the one sentence I want them to walk away with? If you can’t say it, the talk isn’t ready.
- What is the one action I want them to take? Same test.
- What is the most likely objection? Pre-empt it on a slide. “You may be asking…“
- What is my fallback if I’m cut to half the time? Know which two slides survive.
Language for describing data
A data visualisation gives the audience information. Language gives them the interpretation. Without your words, a chart is a Rorschach test — everyone reads what they came in expecting. The vocabulary below turns a chart on a screen into a calibrated claim about the world.
Almost every grammatical tool we have used across the course — conditionals (L1), sentence adverbials (L2), modal verbs (L3), reported speech (L4) — has a job in this section.
Introducing a chart
Don’t read the title. Frame it.
| Function | Phrase |
|---|---|
| Frame the question | “This chart answers the question of whether…“ |
| Frame the comparison | “What you’re looking at is X plotted against Y…“ |
| Frame the timeframe | “This shows the last eighteen months of…“ |
| Frame the surprise | “The line we expected to see is the dotted one. The actual data is the solid one.” |
Avoid: “This is a chart of…“ / “As you can see…“. Filler. Replace with a frame and a signpost (sentence adverbials, L2): “First…”, “Importantly…“, “Strategically…”.
Describing trends
A toolbox of verbs for the most common shapes.
| Direction | Verbs (mild → strong) |
|---|---|
| Upward | edged up · rose · climbed · jumped · surged · doubled |
| Downward | edged down · slipped · fell · dropped · plunged · halved |
| Stable | held steady · remained flat · plateaued · stabilised |
| Volatile | fluctuated · oscillated · swung between · bounced around |
Calibrating with adverbs (L2): slightly, modestly, sharply, dramatically, marginally. “Revenue rose modestly” and “revenue surged” are not the same claim. Pick what your data supports — no stronger.
Quantifying change
Numbers are the spine of a data presentation. The grammar around them matters.
| Function | Phrasing |
|---|---|
| Absolute change | “rose by twelve points”, “fell by 4 million” |
| Relative change | “up 27%“, “down by a third”, “roughly halved” |
| Multiplicative | “doubled”, “three times higher”, “an order of magnitude larger” |
| Approximation | “roughly”, “around”, “just over”, “a little under” |
| Precise | “exactly”, “precisely”, “to the nearest percentage point” |
Watch your prepositions: rose by 12% (the change), rose to 27% (the new level). Mixing them is the most common error in data English. “Churn has risen to 12%“ and “churn has risen by 12 points” are very different claims.
Comparing
Three patterns will cover most cases. Modal verbs (L3) soften comparisons that are real but qualified.
| Pattern | Example |
|---|---|
| Side-by-side | “Mazowieckie may be the largest in absolute terms, but the sample is small.” (modal may softens) |
| Ranking | “Łódzkie ranks first; Lubelskie ranks last, although we should note one caveat…“ |
| Outlier | “One region stands out — Łódzkie at 88, well above the cluster around 50–65.” |
Drawing a conclusion from data
Data does not speak for itself. You make it speak. The first conditional (L1) is the engine of the call to action.
| Function | Phrasing |
|---|---|
| Strong claim | “The data shows clearly that…“ |
| Calibrated claim | “The data suggests that…“ / “This is consistent with…“ |
| Hedged claim | “The data is consistent with X, but does not rule out Y” |
| Conditional claim (L1) | “If this trend continues, we will hit…“ / “Provided that X holds, we should expect…“ |
The verb you choose — shows, suggests, indicates, hints at, is consistent with — calibrates how strong your claim is. Match the verb to the data’s strength.
Acknowledging uncertainty without losing credibility
Hedging done right makes you sound more credible, not less. The trick is hedging the claim, not the delivery, and using modal verbs (L3) to do it precisely.
| Approach | Effect |
|---|---|
| “Um, I think, kind of, sort of, this might suggest, possibly…“ | Hedges the delivery. Sounds unprepared. Audience loses confidence. |
| “The data is consistent with a downturn beginning in Q2, though we should note the sample in the SME segment is small. The trend may strengthen in Q3 as more data comes in.” | Hedges the claim with modals. should signals the caveat is necessary; may signals genuine uncertainty about the future. |
Citing sources and prior findings
Whenever you draw on someone else’s work — a forecast, a survey, a previous report — reported speech (L4) lets you bring it in cleanly without quoting at length.
| Function | Phrasing |
|---|---|
| Confirming a forecast | “The CFO stated that Q3 cash flow had improved — this chart confirms it.” |
| Citing prior work | “The McKinsey study found that firms with structured promotion panels show 60% smaller pay gaps.” |
| Acknowledging objection | “You noted that one quarter is a thin basis for a €15m commitment — chart 2 addresses that directly.” |
| Recapping decisions | “At the last meeting we agreed that investment above €10m would require a structural argument; here it is.” |
A presentation that cites well sounds like the speaker has done their homework.
The workshop
The second half of the class is a workshop. Six groups; six pre-built scenario decks; twenty minutes of preparation; five minutes per group to present.
What the audience listens for
| Criterion | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Headline | A finding, a number, and a promise of structure — in the first sentence. |
| Active titles | Each chart orally framed as a conclusion, not as a label. Don’t read the slide. |
| Trend verbs | Verbs and adverbs calibrated to the data — modestly vs sharply, suggests vs shows. |
| First conditional | “If we approve this, we will…“ The L1 form does the work of projecting the outcome. |
| Signposted transitions | “Building on this…“, “The picture changes when we look at…”. The hand-offs between speakers are where five-minute presentations break. |
| Specific call to action | A named decision, a named timeframe, a named next step. |
How to prepare in twenty minutes
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| Read the deck | Make sure everyone in the group understands every chart. |
| Decide your headline | What is the one sentence you want the audience to walk away with? |
| Divide the slides | Each member should speak at least once. Aim for one or two slides per speaker. |
| Choose your verbs | For each chart, pick the trend verbs and adverbs that match the strength of the claim. Write them down. |
| Draft the call to action | What do you want the audience (a board, a CFO, a client) to do? |
| Rehearse the transitions | The hand-offs between speakers are where five-minute presentations break. Run them at least once. |
The six scenarios
Each scenario gives you a brief and three charts. The brief defines the company, the audience, the setting, and the decision sought. The charts are deliberately neutral — without active titles, without preset highlights — because finding the story is part of the exercise.
| # | Company | Decision sought |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | NorthStar Electronics | Approval to commit €18m to phased entry into the Romanian consumer-electronics market. |
| 2 | Meridian Bank | Approval to close 22 low-traffic branches by end-2026, redeploying 80% of affected staff. |
| 3 | Lattica Consulting | Approval for a three-part intervention to address the firm’s gender pay gap. |
| 4 | Korbex Logistics | Approval to commit €15m to fleet expansion, funded from retained earnings. |
| 5 | Praxis Health | Approval of a €4m Series A round at €28m post-money. |
| 6 | Tarsus Tech | Approval of a company-wide rollout of flexible working from Q3 2025. |
What to do next
If you take only one habit from today, take this one: before any presentation in English, spend ten minutes choosing your verbs.
For each chart on each slide, write down the trend verb (rose, climbed, surged), the adverb (modestly, sharply, dramatically), and the noun (revenue, market share, attrition rate). Don’t write the sentence; just the building blocks. Then improvise around them.