Surviving a teaching presentation, the non-verbal way.

Tom Maguire, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain

[ Editorial note: Tom edited the excellent Catalan issue of HLT back in November 2003. Welcome back to these screens, Tom.
In this article Tom brings you rhetorical techniques for teaching drawn from the Michael Grinder, more behaviouristic end of the NLP spectrum]

"To acquire knowledge, you must study; to acquire wisdom, you must observe."
-Marilyn vos Savant

Have you ever been mesmerised by an excellent teacher? Did you wonder what their secret was, how they managed to put over their ideas in such an attractive way, what it was that made them excellent?

One of the fundamental techniques of a fascinating speaker is their command of what they are saying and also how they are saying it. They know their content so well that they are able to devote part of their attention to the process of communicating it. That process is non- verbal. The good news is that if you have a good grasp of what you want to say then you too can learn to present with excellence.

Let's take the introduction. Your content here is to tell the class what your outcomes are, what you want them to learn from this session. You have two choices : say it to them or tell them and underline the message with non-verbals. The second option will reach more students in a more powerful way.

To achieve this you think of your principal outcomes for the class, for example : concentration, high moral and being productive. Then you make up a short metaphorical story which includes these words. You might say: "As I made my way here this morning I thought to myself how important it is to concentrate on what I had to say. I noticed many people getting to their work, opening shops and coming to school happily greeting each other on the way. I also saw other at work in delivery vans in cafés serving food, directing the traffic, their productive day already begun."

As you pronounce each of your outcome words, pause and assign them to the audience by briefly stretching out your arms towards them, palms up. You have attributed to them the characteristics you want them to have at the end of the session, before you even begin. This will ensure that they know, unconsciously, why they are here that day. The seed has been planted. It is now up to you to continue to explicit your outcomes and show how you want them to work.

Each lesson will be divided into different sections, each one flexibly related to the other in some way. Your next challenges are :

- how to keep the information flowing within each section
- how to separate the different sections in the listeners' mind.

Let's see first how to stack the information so that it is connected up in the listener's mind. This is where you can begin to mesmerise the member of your audience.

It is recommendable to have some visual support for your presentation, whether it be power point slides, OHP transparencies or a whiteboard. This also provides you with three locations: yourself, the participants and the visuals. You have probably pointed to yourself in your self-introduction, you have signalled to the audience in your positive assignments of outcomes above and now you concentrate on the content, illustrated in the visual aids.

You join your contents together within one section by using a pausing sequence each time you finish one point of information. The full sequence is:

- Pause > Take a breath > Speak > Move.

If you had presented the three conditional structures and were now summarising their relationship, you would have the three structures written on the board and then :

- stop talking and remain still for a breath,
- say "The first conditional." Pause" then point to the sentence and read it.
- stop briefly, remaining still,
- say "The second conditional" then point to the second sentence and read it.
- pause and remain still,
- say "The third conditional" and point to that sentence and read it.

This ensures that in the pupils' minds the three structures are linked together and not seen as three different items.

A further refinement is your choice of whether the information will be received as highly credible or more user friendly. To make the content top down credible, point directly to the sentence and keep your hand still. To make the information more user friendly bounce your hand from one word to the other when indicating the visuals.

There are other moments during your speech, however, that you want to separate contents in your listeners' understanding. This is particularly true at points where you move from one main idea to another.

Suppose that you have presented the idea in the second part of this article, joining content, and you know want to move on to discussing how to separate content. You would proceed as follows:

- Pause > Breathe > Point to the content > Talk about it.

In short you reverse what you did when joining information together. This time you move then speak. This breaks the localisation anchor of the content and has the participant attach the new information to a new place, thus separating the two pieces of subject matter.

You may find that when you use the separating pattern you will get audience participation in the form of questions. This is a sign that you are using the non-verbals well. Use this opportunity to clear up any doubts about the previous section before mesmerising them during the next one.

Happy presentations!