CHAPTER 9: PRESENTATTIONAL AIDS. A presentational aid is any visual, audio, audio visual, or other sensory material used by the speaker in a speech.

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1 : PRESENTATTIONAL AIDS A presentational aid is any visual, audio, audio visual, or other sensory material used by the speaker in a speech. A visual aid allows the audience to see as well as hear the speaker present the information. Examples of visual aids include actual objects, models, photographs, drawings and diagrams, maps, charts, and graphs. An audio aid is one that enhances the speaker s verbal message with additional sound. Examples include musical clips from CDs and itunes, and recorded clips from conversations, interviews, famous speeches, and nature sounds like bird calls. Audio visual aids enhance the speech using a combination of sight and sound. Examples of audio visual aids include clips from movies and television, YouTube videos, podcasts, as well as other events or observations captured on video. Other sensory aids include materials that enhance the ideas offered verbally by appealing to smell, taste, or touch. For example, a verbal description of perfume s fragrance can be clarified by allowing audience members to smell it, and the flavor of a particular entrée can be clarified by allowing audience members to taste it. Benefits to using presentational aids. 1. They enable you to adapt to an audience s level of knowledge by clarifying and dramatizing your verbal message. 2. Presentational aids help audiences retain the information they hear. 3. Presentational aids allow you to address the diverse learning styles of your audience. 4. They can increase the persuasive appeal of your speech. In fact, some research suggests that speakers who use presentational aids are almost twice as likely to persuade listeners as those who do not. 5. Using presentational aids may help you to feel more competent. Speakers report that, when they use presentational aids, they tend to be less anxious and have more confidence CRITERIA FOR PRESENTATIONAL AIDS 1. What are the most important ideas you want your audience to understand and remember? These ideas are ones you may want to reinforce with presentational aids. 2. Are there important ideas that are complex or difficult to explain verbally?

2 The old saying One picture is worth a thousand words is true. The same thing can be said for clarifying what you mean by letting your audience hear, taste, feel, or smell it. 3. Is there important information in your speech that the audience may find boring? At times you may want to use presentational aids to help your audience attend to what you are saying. For example, it s sometimes hard for the audience to pay attention to statistics, but a colorful graph can help audience members to concentrate on what you re saying. 4. How many presentational aids should I use? Presentational aids should supplement the oral message of your speech, not replace, overshadow, or distract from it. Most speakers find that about one good aid per minute of speaking time is sufficient to help audiences remember main points, clarify difficult information, and hold audience attention without becoming overly time consuming to create. So in a five-minute presentation, you might aim for between three and seven presentational aids. 5. How large is the audience? The kinds of presentational aids that will work for a small group of fifteen or twenty differ from the kinds that will work for an audience of a hundred or more. Presentational aids should be large enough to be seen and loud enough to be heard by those in the back and corners of the room. 6. Are my presentational aids easy to use and transport? Choose aids that you feel comfortable using and that are easy to transport from home to your speaking site. You want to focus on the content and delivery of your speech, not on how nervous you are using a new technology or transporting a cumbersome or fragile presentational aid. 7. Is the necessary equipment readily available? At times, you may be speaking in an environment that is not equipped for certain displays. In any situation in which you have scheduled equipment from an outside source, you need to prepare for the possibility that the equipment may not arrive on time or may not work the way you anticipated. Call ahead, get to your speaking location early, practice using your presentational aids with the available equipment, and have a backup plan, just in case. 8. Is there sufficient time to show the aid without having it overtake the speech itself? Remember that presentational aids are meant to supplement and enhance your speech, not replace it. If sharing the aid will take too much time, consider a different sort of aid.

3 9. Is the time involved in making or getting the presentational aid and equipment cost-effective? Presentational aids are supplements. Their goal is to supplement what you are doing verbally. If you believe that a particular aid will help you better achieve your goal, then the time spent is well worth it. Otherwise, the best advice we can offer is to keep it simple. PREPARING EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION AIDS. Limit the reading required of the audience. The audience should not spend a long time reading your visual aid; you want them listening to you. So, write points as short phrases rather than complete sentences. Customize presentational aids from other sources. We often get ideas and information for visual aids from other sources, and the tendency is to include everything that was in the original source. But if the original source includes information that is irrelevant to your purpose or audience, simplify your aid so that it includes only the information you want to present. Use a photo, print, or type size that can be seen easily and a volume and sound quality that can be heard easily by your entire audience. Regarding visual materials, check your photo, charts, and lettering for size by moving as far away from the presentational aid as the farthest person in your audience will be sitting. If you can see the image, read the lettering, and see the details from that distance, your aid is large enough; if not, create a larger draft and check it again. Check audio materials for volume and sound quality in a similar way. Use a consistent print style that is easy to read. Avoid fancy print styles; your goal is presentational aids that are easy to read. Likewise, stick to one print style throughout the aid or computerized slide show. In addition, some people think that printing in all capital letters creates emphasis, but the combination of uppercase and lowercase letters is easier to read than uppercase only even when the ideas are written in short phases. Make sure information is laid out in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. Leave sufficient white space around the whole visual so that it s easy to identify each component (white space is the areas of a page without print or pictures). Also, use typefaces and indenting to visually represent relationships between ideas. Add pictures or other visual symbols to add interest.

4 To truly enhance a verbal message, a presentational aid should consist of more than just words. Visual symbols can increase retention by appealing to diverse learning styles. If you are working with computer graphics, consider adding clip art. Most computer graphics packages have a wide variety of clip art that you can import to your document. You can also buy relatively inexpensive software packages that contain thousands of clip art images. Use color strategically. Although black and white can work well for your visual aids, consider using color strategically to emphasize points. Here are some suggestions for incorporating color in your presentational aids: Use the same background color for all your presentational aids and theme for the slides on your computerized slide show. Use the same color to show similarities, and use opposite colors (on a color wheel) to show differences between ideas. Use bright colors, such as red, to highlight important information. Be sure to avoid using red and green together, however, because audience members who are color-blind may not be able to distinguish between them. Use dark colors for lettering on a white background and light colors for lettering on black or deep blue backgrounds. Use no more than two or three colors on any presentational aid that is not a photograph or video clip. Pretend you are your audience. Sit as far away as they will be sitting, and evaluate the colors you have chosen for their readability and appeal. Use presentation software to prepare professional-looking presentational aids. Presentation software is a computer program that enables you to electronically prepare and store your presentational aids using a computer. METHOD OF DISPLAYING PRESENTATIONAL AIDS POSTERS The easiest method for displaying simple drawings, charts, maps, photos, and graphs is by preparing them on or attaching them to stiff cardboard because poster boards tend to be fairly small, use them only with smaller audiences. WHITEBOARD OR CHALK BOARD Because a whiteboard or chalkboard is a staple in every college classroom, many novice (and ill-prepared) speakers rely on this method for displaying their visual aids. Unfortunately, a whiteboard or chalkboard is easy to misuse and to overuse. Moreover,

5 they are not suitable for depicting complex material. Whiteboards or chalkboards should be written on prior to speaking or during a break in speaking. Otherwise, the visual is likely to be either illegible or partly obscured by your body as you write. Or you may end up talking to the board instead of to the audience. FLIPCHARTS A flipchart, a large pad of paper mounted on an easel, can be an effective method for presenting visual aids. Flipcharts (and easels) are available in many sizes. For a presentation to four or fi ve people, a small table top version works well; for a larger audience, a larger pad (thirty-by-forty inches) is needed. Flipcharts are prepared before the speech using colored markers to record the information. At times, a speaker may record some of the information before the speech begins and then add information while speaking. HANDOUTS At times, it may be useful for each member of the audience to have a personal copy of the visual aid. In these situations, you can prepare a handout. On the plus side, you can prepare handouts (material printed on sheets of paper) quickly, and all the people in the audience can have their own professional quality material to refer to and take with them from the speech. On the minus side is the distraction of distributing handouts and the potential for losing audience members attention when you want them to be looking at you. DOCUMENT CAMERA A document camera allows you to project images without transferring them to an acetate fi lm. Transfer drawings, charts, photos, and graphs from original sources onto sheets of eight-by-eleven-inch paper so you can display them smoothly and professionally. CD/VCR/DVD PLAYERS and LCD PROJECTORS To show TV, fi lm, and video clips for a classroom speech, a VCR or DVD player and a television monitor should be sufficient. For larger audiences, however, you will need multiple monitors or, ideally, an LCD multimedia projector. An LCD projector connects to a VCR player, a DVD player, or a computer and projects images from them onto a large screen, which makes them easy to see, even in a large auditorium. An LCD projector is also ideal for displaying computerized slide shows, such as PowerPoint presentations. COMPUTERIZED SLIDE SHOW You can present computerized slide shows using an LCD projector or a large monitor connected to an onsite computer that has presentation software compatible with the software you used to make your aids. Because you can t always anticipate problems with onsite projection equipment, come with backup aids, such as handouts.

6 GUIDELINE FOR USING PRESENTATIONAL AIDS DURING THE SPEECH 1. Plan carefully when to use presentational aids. 2. Position presentational aids and equipment before beginning your speech. 3. Show or play presentational aids only when talking about them. 4. Talk about the visual aid while showing it. 5. Talk to your audience, not to the presentational aid. 6. Display visual aids so that everyone in the audience can see them 7. Avoid passing objects around the audience.