Rhetoric

English Presentation Phrases: The Complete List

Seventy phrases, grouped by the moment you need them. Take ten, learn them until you do not have to think, and the hardest parts of a talk stop being hard.

English Refresher 9 min read Level B1 and above

English presentation phrases are not vocabulary. They are bridges — and a talk in your second language rarely breaks down in the middle of an idea, it breaks down between two of them.

You know your first point. You know your second. What goes missing is the bridge: the six words that carry you from one to the other while the room waits. That is why a list like this is worth more to you than another page of vocabulary.

OneWhy a fixed phrase beats a clever one

In 1983 Andrew Pawley and Frances Hodgetts Syder described a puzzle. Speakers of a language could, in theory, build an enormous number of grammatically correct sentences. In practice they keep reaching for the same ready-made ones. Their proposal was that fluency rests on a large store of what they called lexicalized sentence stems: chunks longer than a word, mostly fixed, retrieved whole instead of assembled.

That is a proposal about how language works, not an experiment — but it explains something you have felt. A fluent speaker is not building every sentence. They are choosing from stock.

There is some evidence you can build that stock deliberately. Boers and colleagues taught one group of learners to notice formulaic phrases and left another group to study the same material without that focus; judges later rated the first group higher on oral proficiency. It was a small study, and the authors themselves asked for replication. The full account, with the hedges it deserves, is in How to Remember Your Speech.

Do not try to learn all seventy. That is not what this page is for.

Pick one phrase from each group you actually need — about ten in total — and say them out loud until they arrive without effort. Ten automatic phrases will carry a whole talk. Eighty-five half-remembered ones will carry nothing.

TwoOpening the talk

The first ninety seconds are the most scripted part of any presentation, and that is a good thing: it is the part you can make safe in advance. What makes an opening land is covered separately in How to Start a Presentation. Below is the plumbing — the sentences that get you from silence into your first point.

Bank one: getting started

Choose one from each group. The simplest option in each is listed first.

Greeting the room: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming.; Hi, everyone. Let’s get started.; Good afternoon. It’s good to see so many of you here.
Introducing yourself: For those who don’t know me, I’m Ana, and I work in the design team.; My name is Ana Silva and I’ve been working on this project for a year.
Saying what the talk is about: Today I want to talk about…; The subject of my presentation is…; I’m here to tell you about one small change that saved us a lot of money.
Saying why it matters to them: By the end, you’ll know exactly how to…; This matters to you because…
Giving the roadmap: I’ve divided this into three parts.; First I’ll explain the problem, then I’ll show you what we tried, and finally I’ll tell you what happened.; There are three things I want you to take away today.
Saying when questions are welcome: Please stop me at any point if something isn’t clear.; I’ll take questions at the end, so please hold on to them.

One phrase to avoid: “Sorry, my English isn’t very good.” It is the most common opening among learners and the most expensive. It tells the room to listen for mistakes instead of for your idea. Start with your topic.

ThreeThe middle: moving, showing, explaining

This is the largest bank because this is where most of your talk happens — and where the joins between ideas are either invisible or painfully obvious. If you only memorize one group on this page, memorize the transitions. For how those transitions should be arranged, see How to Structure a Presentation in English.

Bank two: the body of the talk

The transitions are the most valuable ten seconds of learning on this page.

Starting your first point: Let’s start with…; The first thing to say is this.
Moving to the next point: So that’s the problem. Now let’s look at what we did about it.; That brings me to my second point.; With that in mind, let’s turn to…; Now that we’ve covered the cost, I want to talk about the time.
Giving an example: Let me give you an example.; Here’s what that looked like in practice.; To give you an idea of the scale…
Emphasizing something: This is the important part.; If you remember one thing from today, remember this.; I want to be very clear about this.
Referring to a slide or a visual: As you can see here…; Take a look at the line on the left.; I’ll leave this on the screen for a moment.
Describing data and trends: Sales rose sharply in the spring.; It fell by about a third, then leveled off.; The number doubled in two years.; This is where it starts to get interesting.
Rephrasing and clarifying: In other words…; Let me put that a different way.; What I mean by that is…
Looking back and looking forward: As I said at the beginning…; I’ll come back to this in a moment.; We’ll look at the numbers shortly.

FourWhen something goes wrong

Something will. You will lose your place, or a word will disappear, or the screen will stop working. The difference between a speaker who recovers and one who does not is almost never calm — it is having the sentence ready. These are the phrases worth learning first, because they are the ones you cannot invent while your heart is loud.

Bank three: repair

Learn two of these by heart. They are cheap insurance.

You lost your place: Where was I? Ah, yes.; Let me go back to my second point for a moment.; Give me one second to find my place.
The word will not come: I’m looking for the word… you know what I mean.; It’s a kind of… well, something like that.; The technical word escapes me, but the idea is simple.
You made a mistake: Sorry — let me say that again.; That’s not quite what I meant.; Let me correct myself.
Technology fails: While we fix this, let me tell you what’s on the next slide.; I don’t need the screen for this part anyway.
You are running out of time: I’m going to skip ahead so we have time for questions.; I’ll keep the last part short.

Notice what is missing: there is no phrase here for apologizing at length. One short correction and you keep going. A long apology costs you more time than the mistake did.

FiveClosing, and the questions after it

Two separate jobs, and most speakers run them together. First you end the talk. Then, only then, you open the floor. Keeping them apart is what stops a presentation from trailing off into a shrug.

Bank four: ending and questions

Have your last sentence memorized word for word. Every other phrase on this page can be improvised. Not that one.

Signaling the end: So, to sum up…; Let me finish where I started.; That brings me to the end.
The recap: We looked at three things today: the cost, the time, and the people.; If you take away one thing, take away this.
Closing and thanking: Thank you for listening.; Thank you. I hope that was useful.
Inviting questions: I’m happy to take any questions.; What would you like to know?
Buying a second on a hard question: That’s a good question. Let me think for a moment.; So you’re asking whether…
Checking you understood the question: Do you mean the cost, or the time?; Sorry, could you say that again?
When you do not know: I don’t know, but I can find out and send it to you.; That’s outside what I looked at, so I’d rather not guess.
Closing the questions: I think that’s all we have time for. Thank you.; Come and find me afterward if you have more.

Build your own ten

Write these on one card. This card is the whole point of the page.

Your greeting.
Your topic sentence, starting “Today I want to talk about…”
Your roadmap, naming how many parts there are.
One transition you can use between every point.
One phrase for giving an example.
One phrase that marks the important part.
One repair phrase for when the word will not come.
One phrase for when you lose your place.
Your recap sentence.
Your last sentence, word for word.

The short version

Fluent speakers are not inventing every sentence; they are choosing from a store of ready ones. You can build that store on purpose, and a presentation is the easiest place to start because the same ten moments come around every time. Pick one phrase per moment. Say them aloud until they are automatic. Then spend all the attention you just saved on the thing that actually matters, which is what you came to say.

Put this into practice

Module 4 of Base Camp, our free B1 course, takes a twenty-phrase starter pack and has you record a thirty-second opening using three of them. Thirty seconds is enough to make a phrase yours.

Start Module 4: Phrases That Carry You Try the Speech Outline Builder

Keep reading

Audience How to Start a Presentation: 7 Openings That Work Structure How to Structure a Presentation in English

Where this comes from

The phrases on this page are craft, collected from how talks actually work — no study is claimed for any single one. The two ideas behind the page are sourced below, with their limits stated.

Pawley, A. & Syder, F. H. (1983). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication. Longman. A theoretical proposal, not an experiment.

Boers, F., Eyckmans, J., Kappel, J., Stengers, H. & Demecheleer, M. (2006). Formulaic sequences and perceived oral proficiency: Putting a lexical approach to the test. Language Teaching Research, 10(3). A small study (32 learners) whose authors called for replication; the outcome measured was judges’ ratings.

Written by Jason for English Refresher · Browse the Public Speaking Library