After the first two stages of greeting and self-introduction, you can now move onto introducing the topic of your presentation. As we are still at the early stages of your talk, it is important to continue building your relationship with the audience by connecting with them. A good structure for this phase of the opening is:

3. Hook

4. Topic

3. Hook

The hook connects with the audience and builds interest in the topic. It is often in the form of a question to the audience. Here two examples:

a) Please raise your hands if you’ve ever been to England.

b) Do you ever feel you pay too much for your household energy?

4. Topic

Now try to state what you are going to talk about in one simple, easy-to-understand sentence. Your audience will be set up for your topic introduction because of the hook they just heard. The following are examples that match the hooks above:

a) Today, I am going to talk about some unusual travel destinations in England.

b) I’d like to discuss some easy-to-apply ideas for reducing your electricity bills.

As you can see, the hook and the topic are closely related. Try to think of some effective hooks for the following topics:

a) The topic of todays talk is building a comfortable retirement pension.

b) Today, I’d like to introduce some fabulous scuba diving opportunities in the Philippines.

c) Your own idea.