Problem situation in English texts of business presentations as a means of stimulation of audience’s mental activity

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Оренбургский государственный университет

Problem situation in english texts of business presentations as a means of stimulation of audience's mental activity

Бутыркина И.С.

Темкина В.Л.

Business presentation is an essential part of communication of different organizations with partners and clients. It allows the speaker to render the most important information about the product or service visually and make the audience take some certain actions.

There is a great amount of structural principles that the speaker can use creating a business presentation. Some researchers point out the following ones:

· Chronological structure - this kind of structure organizes the presentation in a sequence, with the earlier events coming first and the most recent ones last. The presentation can combine the usage of various tenses - present, past, and future. The speaker is able to mention what has already happened in a sphere of interest as well as hopes for the future change or development.

· Narrative structure - it transforms the chronological structure into a storytelling with certain characters and a clear plot. In this way the speaker using suitable stylistic devices and language means has an opportunity to make the presentation more entertaining and memorable.

· Causal structure - the situation when the speech is presented in a sequence of cause and effect. The speaker shows how each item or event leads to the others.

· Topical structure - having one key topic, the presentation, however, may be subdivided into sub-topics, and thus breaking the presentation into separate segments. The topics may be connected together by a major topic, which may be presented in the beginning (thus forming a hierarchical breakdown) or may be concluded at the end of the speech [1].

Anthony Weston adds some more techniques of business ideas organization:

· Module structure - a sequence of similar parts, blocks or components, arranged in order.

· Physical structure - clasters, or ideas are organized according to physical or geographical options.

· Difficulty / Action - the center of the presentation is occupied by one or more difficult tasks and decisions, or actions which are offered for the solution.

· Form / Function - business concept, method or technology is put as a major thing in the presentation as well as their functional opportunities.

· Analyzing a concrete example - a structure where all the aspects of a certain business are revealed.

· Comparison / Contrast - this type of structure illustrates the main differences of one company from another.

· Numeral structure - enumeration of ideas, facts and arguments.

· Rhetoric questions - question formulation and responding to them by the speaker [2].

The last type of structure can correlate with problem-solution structure that is considered to be one of the most common and effective to present information to the audience. One can notice this structure in the studies and reference books of many business coaches and professional speakers.

Presentation based on this problem-solution structure includes a problem, emphasized by the speaker and the variants of how to solve it. First of all, the speaker presents a problem, highlighting all the issues and disadvantages that occur. Then the solution is offered, showing how it can solve the issue and make consumer or buyer's life easier and more comfortable. There may be the third section between them that is connected with the problem analysis, quite often based on a cause-effect pattern. One can expand the above mentioned plan with a detailed explanation. Here is one more version: a) to produce a clear statement that the problem exists, b) to provide evidence that supports the existence of the problem, c) to present an evidence of a tendency that has led to the problem, d) to mention main definition, concepts and terms, e) to state a clear description of the setting, f) to point out possible causes concerning the problem, and g) to use a specific and feasible statement [3].

A problem statement can be defined as “a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon. It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product. Focusing on the facts, the problem statement should be designed to address the five W's - who, what, where, when, and why. The first condition of solving a problem is understanding the problem, which can be done by way of a problem statement” [4]. Marketing dictionary of Monash University offers to consider problem situation model as “a model of a problem situation faced by a decision-maker, constructed in order to get as clear a picture as possible of the problem; a problem situation model includes a description of the desired outcomes, the relevant variables, and the relationships of each of the variables to the outcomes” [5].

Business consultants and coaches point out the S-formed structure of the presentation of problem-solution type. It includes the following elements:

· Introduction (opening address, the leading to the basics).

· Problem statement (urgent questions).

· Problem solution (the body of the presentation where the speaker discloses the nature of the problem, the reasons for emerging it and possible ways of solving the problem).

· Conclusion (the repetition of main ideas of the presentation and call for action).

Speaking about the informative value that problem-solution structure can offer it is also necessary to note great possibilities for stimulation of the audience's mental activity. Problem situation is a good driver for making people think about the topic presented, analyze it and make some personal suggestions. If the speaker merely renders the information about the product or service without answering the question “Why is this product or services so important? What problem is it going to solve? For what purpose is this product launched or this service offered? What is in it for the audience?” then he or she will fail catching the audience's attention and gaining their trust. The method of problem statement can be useful and effective as it helps the speaker engage the audience into the mutual cognitive process. business presentation partner customer

The material for this study is taken from pitches of various international business presentations of business ideas and start-ups which are freely available in the Internet.

As for the research methods, we use analysis of theoretical and practice - oriented literature, methods of linguistic description and interpretation of language material.

There is a quite common usage of the “method of three” that is when the speaker divides the whole presentation into three parts (introduction, main body and conclusion), three sets of arguments using by the speaker to prove the assertion, three kinds of speeches etc.

The example below is Morgan Fallos's presentation where he offers the problem statement dividing it into three main obstacles that customers concern about: “There are a few problems with cocktails. The first is to make excellent cocktails. Bar and restaurant owners must hire a good bartender. This guy costs up to 5000 euros per month. The second problem is that cocktails take up to 3 minutes to prepare, the third problem - cocktails are never consistent. You can have a very good one and five minutes later a very bad one made by the same bartender […] To solve all these problems, we develop BlendBow during four years. It's the first cocktail machine of the world that can make any cocktail in less than one minute” [6]. So, the speaker defined the problem clearly, he explained why it was urgent and presented their new brand “BlendBow” that was going to solve the problematic task.

Another example is taken from the presentation of 24sessions that is connected with the getting professional help online. The speaker starts the description of how to live in modern world and offers a parallel in opportunities of finding the answers to the arising questions: “We live in amazing times. Everything in our lives is fast, simple and online. When we have a question, we Googgle the answer. When you're facing big financial decisions, legal issues or problems with your health, there simply is no easy answer. You need professional advice. Sadly getting advice is not amazing at all. It's slow, complex and offline. And this is not what we want” [7]. The speaker supports his ideas with the survey data so that the audience can get a proof to his words (“…recent study shows that 90% of us want human advice to be delivered online”). But to sure that the audience will follow the speaker's words, the speaker starts telling a story from his personal experience that possesses a great emotional impact and thus making the audience listen to the speaker attentively and realize the scale of the problem: “…so eight years ago I bought my first house and I needed mortgage advice and when I recently bought a second house and I didn't get mortgage advice again, I realized nothing's changed. In the last years technology moved at lightning pace, yet the advice industry still acts like the Internet doesn't exist. Now I can sure start by orientating online but then I need to fill contact forms, call center call me during work when I'm never able to pick up, we need to somehow find a date when the advisor, my girlfriend and myself can meet so that after about a month we need to take afternoon off, pray for a babysitter and survive traffic jams to finally meet this advisor. What a waste of time for us and what waste of time for the advisor. And the same problem exists everywhere in professional services” [7]. And finally the speaker presents the way of how to eliminate this discomfort: “But how to fix it? What we do is to remove all wasteful steps in the middle, take the process online and focus on what really brings value, the human interaction. We provide companies the total solution for online advice. With 24sessions people can instantly book the advisors and schedule a date, get advice for a live video chat” [7].

The company “TallyGo” under the logo “Get better directions” renders the services of upgrading the navigation systems. The speaker start by sharing with the audience of the desperation connected with traffics. He explains that “battling traffic is a huge problem. It's already insanely bad and it's only getting worse. To cope we use navigation apps but the apps you use aren't nearly as smart as you think. Let's say we are going from downtown LA to Santa Monica where does that route actually come from. There are literary billions of possible routes even for that short drive. So calculating the fastest one in milliseconds is a really hard computation problem” [8]. Admitting that some of the modern devices can often re-route people and thus are considered to be ineffective, the speaker presents TallyGo that enables people to “provide what's call time independent routing where the cost of each stretch of road is calculated based on when you're actually expected to reach each turn […] TallyGo is the only one today truly living up to that name minute level traffic data ingestion, prediction, accidents and routing. This positions us to solve a really costly problem” [8].

Problem statement is a short explanation of a problem of business faces and an offered solution to the problem. Problem statements can be effective ways to define an issue and communicate a solution within a short period of time. Presenting the information according to the problem statement type determines reaching many goals, starting from the vivid and visual provision of information, logical creation of speech, audience's entertainment and making the audience a part of the presentation, transforming them from passive listeners to active participants who absorb the presented information, is able to analyze all the advantages and drawback of the product or services that is going to emerge on the market and formulate some conclusions based on what is seen and heard. In this case the audience gets not only a new information but also valuable knowledge and experience.

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