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A final point concerns timing and quantity of information.
Psychologists have suggested that concentration is reduced after about
twenty minutes without a break or a change in activity. Furthermore
audiences should not be overburdened with technical details or given
too many facts to remember. It is claimed that to ask people to
remember more than three things in a five minute talk is too much.
Some say that seven is the maximum number of any length of
presentation. Any such calculations are probably not very reliable, but
every speaker needs to think about exactly how much information of a
particular type a specific audience is likely to absorb and to plan
accordingly.
STRUCTURE THE MAIN BODY
The main body of the presentation contains the details of the subject
or themes described in the introduction. All the above techniques are
especially useful in making the main body easily understood. They
help the audience to follow the information and to remember it. They
also help the speaker to keep to the planned structure and to know
exactly what stage has been reached at all times during the
presentation. Clear structure doesn’t just help the audience! In many
presentations the main body can be usefully divided into different
parts. Clearly there are many ways to divide the main body of a
presentation and often different parts will themselves be divided into
smaller sections of information.
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