Tag: sentence starters

Useful Phrases for Presentations in English

teacherjulieta4 Comments

Presentations are very common in academic and work settings, and they can be a bit challenging.

Here you can find some sentence starters that will help you organize your ideas to sound professional and fluent.

1 Greeting the Audience
  • Good morning/ good afternoon/ good evening everyone
  • Welcome to my presentation
  • If you don’t know me, my name is …
  • I work/ study in … department/ program/ lab
  • I’d like to thank you all for coming today
  • It’s a great pleasure to be here with you today
2 Introducing the topic
  • Today I’m going to talk about/ show you …
  • I’m here today to present…
  • What I want to talk about today is…
  • As you can see on the screen, our topic today is…
  • I’ve divided my presentation into three main parts
  • As you can see from the agenda/ outline I’ll be talking about…
  • Before we begin I want to point out that all the slides/ the proposal/ the final report will be sent to you by (day) at (time)
  • I’ll be handing out copies of the slides at the end of my presentation
  • I can email the PowerPoint presentation to anyone who would like it
  • I would like to start by (+ing verb) …
3 Connecting your ideas
  • First, I would like to talk about/ show you …
  • First, I’d like to give you an overview of….
  • Next, I’ll focus on… and then ….
  • What I am going to focus next is…
  • This leads directly to my next point
  • This brings us to the next point/question
  • Let’s now move on to/turn to…
  • Then I’ll go on to highlight what I see as the main points of….
  • Finally, I’d like to address the problem of…
4 Highlighting important information
  • One thing that I want to stress is…
  • I’d like to stress/highlight/emphasize the following points…
  • The interesting/significant/important thing about…. is….
5 Summarizing ideas
  • Before I move on, I’d like to recap the main points
  • Let me briefly summarize the main issues
  • I’d like to summarize what I’ve said so far…
6 Describing visuals
  • As you can see here, …
  • Now, let’s look at/let’s have a look at/take a look at/
  • As the graph/table shows/indicates…
  • From Table/ Figure … we can see/conclude/show/estimate/calculate/infer that…
  • The chart/ graph compares…
7 Closing
  • Well, this brings me to the end of my presentation/talk
  • That covers just about everything I wanted to say about…
  • Thank you for your attention
8 Questions and comments
  • If you have any questions, I am happy to answer them
  • Are there any questions?
  • If you have any questions, I’d be pleased to answer them.
  • And now I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have
9 If there are some technical problems
  • I’m sorry about the (tech/sound) problem. Ex. I’m sorry about the slow connection
  • Thanks for bearing with me = Thanks for your patience
  • It will be just one moment
  • I apologize for not having enough time/ handouts/ chairs/ samples
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Useful Phrases for New Year’s Resolutions

teacherjulietaLeave a comment

A New Year, new opportunities to improve your English! It’s time to start thinking about New Year resolutions.

A resolution is a firm decision to do or not to do something in the future. In English there are different ways to talk about our resolutions depending on how determined we are to accomplish them.

There are different websites with useful information about how to make and keep New Year’s resolutions. However, here I’m going to talk about the grammar behind talking about our resolutions in English.

In the table below you can find some useful sentence starters that you can use to talk about your New Year’s resolutions.

Sentence starterMeaningExample
(+) I’m going to + base form
(-) I’m not going to + base form		It’s a plan or
intention for the future		I’m going to practice English every day.
I’m not going to eat junk food.
(+) I‘m planning to + base formThings that you are almost definitely going to do.
Things that you have already scheduled or made some preparations for.		I’m planning to take English classes during the summer.
I hope to + base form
I‘d like to + base form		Things you want to do but you it’s not a definite planI hope to travel more.
I’d like to lose weight.
I might + base form
I may + base form
I‘m thinking about + gerund		Things you are considering, but you’re not sure if you will do it or not.I might travel to Brazil.
I may apply to grad school.
I’m thinking about changing careers.

Practice time

  1. Choose 1 item per column.
  2. Write the names of each item in order. For example: hamburger, wine, mountain, Whatsapp.
  3. Repeat step 2 two more times.
  4. Swipe left to find out your resolution.
  5. Use the sentence starters in the chart below and the words in the New Year’s resolution generator to make your sentences.

Examples:

I’m going to stop taking selfies after zumba.

I’m not going to stop taking selfies after zumba.

I hope to stop taking selfies after zumba.

I‘m thinking about stopping taking selfies after zumba.

Share your resolutions with us.

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