Using Gestures in PowerPoint Presentations
Human Body is an effective source for conveying certain information. Adequate balance of verbal as well as non verbal communication is must for achieving success in the field of PowerPoint presentation. Aiming to become a successful presenter? You need to maintain a proper equilibrium between your words and gestures.
Gestures are a form of non verbal communication and play a crucial role in determining the level of achievement attained by your presentation. Gestures are capable of depicting the state of your mind. Sometimes, people get nervous while delivering a presentation. This can be judged by trembling of their hands or shaky legs.
You don’t need to be worried. Just calm down and focus on your listeners. Supporting your words with appropriate non verbal signals will help in generating user interest.
Importance of appropriate gestures
Proper clarification of all your words can be clearly depicted through appropriate gestures
You can efficiently dramatize your work using appropriate gestures
Use of corrective gestures help in reducing mental stress
It also simulates better audience participation
Categorization of Gestures
Descriptive Gestures
Such gestures help in clarifying your message. It also helps in enhancing your verbal message.
Emphatic Gestures
These gestures underscore your verbal message.
Suggestive Gestures
Suggestive gestures symbolize your ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Prompting Gestures
These gestures propel your audience to suggest a desired response.
Facial expressions and eye contact also play an important role in deciding the effectiveness of your presentation.
Face is said to be the mirror of your mind. Facial expressions are capable of communicating your attitude, feelings and other emotions more than any other body gesture of yours. Therefore, it is advised that you always control your facial expressions wisely.
After your voice, eyes are the only means to communicate your message effectively in front of the audience. Sufficient eye contact will ultimately help in increasing the audience’s level of attention towards your presentation.
Besides this, presenter can also judge the response of audience and their level of interest by examining their eyes.
Hand gesture recognition is also very important. Whenever you feel that your listeners are losing interest in the presentation, then you can take help of small activity involving sign language where members of audience need to relate to your hand moments and then guess what you are trying to say. This will act as a relaxing activity for them.
Additionally, in the mean time you can convey the purpose of your presentation.
Proper usage of gestures can help in enhancing your presentation. Go on! Play with gestures and pull maximum audience attention towards your presentation. Alternatively you may be interested to learn more about gestures in Kinetic PowerPoint presentations or gesture stencils for PowerPoint templates.