The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
228STEP 4: ORGANIZING THE PRESENTATION
One of the most common suggestions made to people who prepare presentations is 
to pay close attention to the three phases of the talk: the introduction, the main body 
of the talk, and the conclusion. The introduction  should include an overview of the pre -
sentation so audience members know what to expect. The main body  of the presentation 
is where you discuss the main content of the talk, with all of the important details. At 
the conclusion , you should provide a brief summary, as well as some interpretations and 
 inferences about the content (for instance, why the presentation was important).
If possible, your presentation should be organized so it tells a story. For example, 
before describing a new method of performing some task, you might provide the audi -
ence with a history of how that particular task has been performed in the past so they 
have a context in which to understand the new information. Or, the presentation can 
be laid out so that a series of problems are described, each followed by one or more 
solutions.
STEP 5: MAKING THE PRESENTATION INTERESTING
In addition to making sure your main points are conveyed to the audience, it is 
important that they are conveyed in a way that is interesting. To help you do this, 
consider strategies like humor, analogies, personal stories, examples, illustrations, and 
relevant statistics. Be careful not to use humor that could offend audience members. 
You never know who is in your audience and whether their backgrounds, beliefs, or 
experiences might cause them to take a joke the wrong way. Another strategy is to 
involve the audience members in some way. For example, you might ask them questions