Unleash the power of tenses in your presentation | Business English

By the end of this lecture, you’ll understand why mastering tenses is vital for expressing ideas about the past, the present, and the future in a way that keeps your audience engaged and informed.

In this lecture, we’ll talk about why using tenses is so important when we give presentations—a skill that’s crucial for effective communication.

Think of tenses as choosing the right words to match the exact moment when you’re telling a story or explaining something. This choice of words isn’t just about being correct; it’s about making sure your information is clear, keeping the audience interested, and helping them follow what you’re saying.

It’s like painting a picture with words, where the right tenses create a clear, organised, and engaging story. In the sections that follow, we’ll explore why tenses are so essential for presentations. You’ll discover how they help in making your information clear and accurate, organising your message, and making your audience feel different emotions and perspectives. We’ll also see how they help convey time-sensitive information effectively.

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Here’s why tenses are important:-

1) Clarity and Accuracy. Tenses help make information clear and accurate.

Using the right tenses shows when something happened, is happening, or will happen.

This helps the audience understand the order and timing of events, avoiding confusion. It lets you share information in a way that matches the facts and meaning accurately.

2) Coherence and Organisation. Using the right tenses makes your communication organised and easy to follow.

When you use tenses consistently, the audience can follow your ideas and the flow of your message, whether it’s a story, an essay, a presentation, or any other kind of communication.

This makes it easier for the audience to connect the dots and understand what you’re saying.

3) Context and Engagement. Tenses add feelings and different perspectives to your message.

By choosing the right tenses, you can make your message more emotional and engaging.

Using the past tense can make the audience feel like they’re remembering something from the past.

The present tense makes the information feel immediate and alive.

The future tense can make the audience curious about what’s coming next.

4) Time-Sensitive Information. For information about time, like news, history, or plans, it’s essential to use the right tenses.

Tenses help the audience understand when things happened and how important they are.

It’s like using past tense for history, present tense for news, and future tense for upcoming events or predictions.

5) Different Perspectives. Tenses allow you to show different points of view.

For example, using past perfect tense (“had”) can indicate something happened before another event in the past.

This can be useful when you compare different times or explain why things happen.

Using different tenses enriches your communication and helps the audience understand better.

RECAP

Let’s summarise what we’ve learned. Tenses are crucial for:

Clarity and Accuracy.
Coherence and Organisation.
Context and Engagement.
Time-Sensitive Information.
Showing Different Perspectives.

Overall, mastering tenses will help you express ideas about the past, present, and future effectively.