English for Academic Conference Presentations

Opening and Signposting

A strong opening immediately establishes your topic and relevance.

• Opening: 'Good morning/afternoon. I'd like to talk about...' / 'Today I'll be presenting...'
• Structure: 'I'll begin with a brief overview of..., then move on to..., and conclude with...'
• Transitions: 'Having established X, I'd now like to turn to Y' / 'Moving on to our findings...'
• Returning: 'As I mentioned earlier...' / 'This brings me back to my initial point...'

Describing Data and Charts

• Directing attention: 'If you look at this chart...' / 'As you can see here...' / 'This graph shows...'
• Highlighting key data: 'What's particularly striking here is...' / 'The key finding is...'
• Interpreting: 'This suggests that...' / 'What this means is...' / 'We can interpret this as...'

Example: If you look at Figure 2, you can see that the intervention group showed a consistent improvement over 8 weeks — an increase of approximately 35% compared to the control group. What's particularly interesting here is that the improvement continued even after the intervention ended.

Handling Q&A in English

The Q&A session is where many non-native speakers feel most anxious. These phrases buy you time and show academic poise.

• Buying time: 'That's a very good question. Let me think about that for a moment.'
• Clarifying: 'If I understand correctly, you're asking about...'
• When you don't know: 'That's outside the scope of our current study, but it's something we're planning to investigate.'
• Agreeing with a limitation: 'You raise a valid point. This is indeed a limitation of our current methodology.'