Style sheet for presentations and essays
1. Present the problem or subject.
In this presentation/ essay, we will be considering….
The problem resides in…. The central question/issue is the following one…
We have selected the following documents to be analysed.
2. Organise your speech and guide your public
First we will analyse the documents. Secondly, we will propose a social and economic interpretation.
We now come to the second point which concerns… Let’s go back to what we said about…
As mentioned above / As said previously…
At this point I’d like to say that... You should know that….
You may now be wondering why… We will now concentrate on…
3. Describe
It can be divided into 3 parts / categories, namely…
It consists of / it includes / it represents…
On the right / in the center, we can notice / clearly see / recognise…
The different stages are the following ones :… The major elements are the following ones / are described below…
4. Insist, focus attention
It is striking to realise that… It should be noted that…
It is clear / obvious that…
If we take a closer look, we realise that…
I’d like to focus your attention on…
Now if we look at / turn to…
I’d like to stress that… / insist on one particular point which is…
No need to say that…. It goes without saying that…
5. Interpret, analyse, explain
Let me explain… What I mean is that… In other words…
Let me give you a possible interpretation…
It is a good reflexion of / a good illustration of…
It connotes / refers to / is an allusion to / symbolises / is an indication of…
This can be interpreted as… / It shows that…/It proves that…
It is a clear indication of…/ could be related to…
If we look at it in terms of…. we realise that…
However, we should not forget that…
The meaning is unfortunately not clear/obvious. It presents a lot of ambiguities.
It assumes that… It takes for granted… It is based on the assumption that….
It reflects the concern of the period / It is a mirror of society / It echoes…
We may propose the following interpretation / We may conclude that…
It is difficult to agree with such views / A different interpretation of the problem may be given by…
6. Compare
If we compare A and B, we realise that…
We should distinguish between A and B because…
They are in sharp contrast / opposition.
A clear pattern emerges from the comparison
On the one hand… On the opposite… On the contrary…
It presents a paradox. Indeed….
7. Illustrate
I will just give a few examples…
As you can see in the figure / representation below…
8. Convince
You will be surprised to hear that… It comes as a surprise…
I am convinced that…
You will agree with me that…
It strikes the imagination… It arouses a feeling of….
9. Conclude and sum up
To sum up / to conclude, we can say that… One final word… Just one more thing…
We may draw the following conclusion… We can therefore conclude by saying that…