3.1.3 - Planning and organising a persuasive formal presentation

Plan for listeners, not a page

From your topic, purpose and audience choices, write one sentence that completes this thought: After listening, I want this audience to think, feel or do... This is the controlling purpose of the presentation. Each later move should help that audience reach it.

A formal presentation is prepared for a formal setting, but it need not sound stiff or distant. It may be a talk, speech, debate contribution or dialogue, provided that the student gives an extended individual presentation. The topic is agreed with the teacher in advance, and AQA gives no more than ten minutes overall for the presentation and questioning as guidance rather than an extra scored threshold.

Listeners cannot move their eyes back up a page, so they need a clear main position, relevant support, explained connections and signals showing why the presentation is moving on. They also need enough context to understand the issue without already sharing your knowledge.

Your centre and teacher conduct and assess the endorsement, and the final presentation must be your own work.

Build an expert listener route

Consider this planning brief.

A student will address students and staff to persuade them to approve a six-week trial of a quiet lunch room on Tuesdays and Fridays. A side room is unused at those times; the main hall and courtyard would remain social spaces; and the student council could collect feedback after the trial. Some listeners are concerned that the plan might remove space from clubs.

An expert does not begin by decorating sentences. They decide what the mixed audience needs to understand, and in what order:

The presentation might move from need to workable response to tested concern to action, but that is a choice for this situation, not a compulsory formula. A speaker could instead begin with a short hypothetical example, or place the concern earlier if that is what the audience most needs answered.

A weaker alternative would open with the room timetable, list several benefits, add the word however before the club concern and finish with “That's all.” Its details are not necessarily wrong, but the logistics arrive before listeners know why they matter, the benefits are not explained, however disguises rather than develops the relationship, and the ending gives the audience no final priority.

Make support earn its place

A persuasive point becomes convincing through development, not through the number of facts or techniques attached to it.

These elements are resources, not a fixed sentence order. An anecdote may lead to a claim; a concern may come before the evidence that resolves it; a practical example may do more work than a statistic. The test is whether a listener can follow the connection.

For the quiet-room proposal, the fact that a room is unused on Tuesdays and Fridays supports feasibility. A hypothetical example of a student wanting twenty calm minutes makes the need concrete. The explanation does the persuasive work: the proposal adds a limited choice without taking away the social spaces most students already use. Simply announcing “The room is free” would leave that significance unstated.

In a real presentation, check that evidence is current, relevant to the actual setting and honestly attributed. Do not invent a statistic because it sounds authoritative. Record the source and the precise claim in your planning notes so that your spoken reference is accurate.

Signpost development for the audience

Signposts should name the relationship between ideas, not appear as a collection of impressive connectives.

The wording can change. What matters is that the audience knows whether the speaker is advancing, explaining, qualifying, answering or concluding. Repeating firstly, secondly, thirdly may number points without showing how they develop.