Concluding Your Presentation

END HOW YOU BEGAN

If you have difficulty deciding how to end your presentation, consider using the bookending method—that is, end the same way you began. If you begin your presentation with a quotation, end with the same or a similar quotation. If you began by referring to an event, ask your audience to recall it. If you began with a story, refer back to that story. For example:

Remember the story I told you about two-year-old Joey, who had a hole in his throat so he could breathe, a tube jutting out of his stomach so he could be fed? For Joey, an accidental poisoning was an excruciatingly painful and horrifying experience. For Joey’s parents, it was a time of fear, panic, and helplessness. Thus, it is a time to be prepared for and, even better, a time to prevent.

SUMMARIZE

A concluding summary reinforces your message, but it should be clear, logical, and brief. A summary can be a memorable way to conclude a presentation. For example, the following conclusion of a student’s presentation on sleep deprivation sums up her major ideas clearly without labeling each key point with numbers or reciting them word for word. She ends with two short, but memorable sentences.

Recognizing that you may be sleep deprived is the first step. The hardest thing to do is to alter your habits. Retraining yourself to follow a normal sleep pattern isn’t going to happen overnight. But once you discover that a few extra hours of sleep will help you feel more rested, relaxed, and revitalized, giving up that extra hour on the internet or watching TV will have been worth it. There is so much in life to enjoy. Sleep longer, live longer.

QUOTE SOMEONE

A memorable quotation can give your speech a dramatic and effective ending.

For example, on January 28, 1986, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation a few hours after the fatal Challenger disaster that killed all seven crew members. Reagan ended his conclusion with a line from “High Flight,” a sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II who died at the age of nineteen during a training flight:³

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

TELL A STORY

Ending with a good STORY (323–32) can help audience members visualize the desired outcome of your presentation and remember your main ideas. A public speech by Marge Anderson, chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, uses a story to conclude:⁴

I’d like to end with one of my favorite stories. It’s a funny little story about Indians and non-Indians, but its message is serious. You can see something differently if you are willing to learn from those around you. Years ago, white settlers came to this area and built the first European-style homes. When Indian People walked by these homes and saw [windows], they looked through them to see what the strangers inside were doing. The settlers were shocked, but it made sense when you think about it: windows are made to be looked through from both sides. Since then, my People have spent many years looking at the world through your window. I hope today I’ve given you a reason to look at it through ours.

SHARE YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS

Putting yourself into the ending of a presentation by disclosing how you feel can touch the emotions of your audience and leave them with a strong memory of you, the SPEAKER (72–85). Earlier in this chapter, you read the introduction to Margaret Muller’s speech on Down syndrome to seventh and eighth graders. Here is how Margaret concluded:⁵

I am not sad about the fact that I have Down syndrome. It is just part of me. I have a great brother (most of the time), and parents who love me a lot. I have wonderful friends who enjoy hanging out and having fun with me. I have teachers who help me keep on learning new things. I am glad to be a student at Lincoln Middle School, because it is a great school and almost everyone is really nice. Down syndrome has not stopped me from having a worthwhile life.

USE POETIC LANGUAGE

USING LANGUAGE (305–22) in a way that inspires and resonates is one of the best ways to ensure that your conclusion is memorable. If Martin Luther King Jr. had said “Don’t worry, things will get better” at the end of his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, his words would not have had the desired impact or become a well-known quotation. In his conclusion, he used lyrics from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”: “I’m not worried about anything. . . . ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’” Poetic words can make your conclusion sing.

You don’t have to be a poet or a famously eloquent politician to conclude your presentation poetically. One of our students ended his presentation about respecting older people with a slightly reworded version of a short but poetic phrase by Francis Bacon: Old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old people to love.

CALL FOR ACTION

A challenging but effective way to end a presentation is to CALL FOR ACTION (454). Use a call for action when you want your audience to do more than merely listen—when you want them to do something.

Here is how Dr. Robert M. Franklin, president of Morehouse College, ended remarks delivered to a town hall meeting of students on his campus:⁶

Morehouse is your house. You must take responsibility for its excellence. . . . If you want to be part of something rare and noble, something that the world has not often seen—a community of educated, ethical, disciplined Black men more powerful than a standing army—then you’ve come to the right place. . . . Up you mighty men of Morehouse, you aristocrats of spirit, you can accomplish what you will!

MIX THE METHODS

As with introductions, many speakers rely on more than one way to conclude a presentation. Note how this student speaker uses statistics and a personal story to end a speech on alcoholism:

As you now know, about one in eight adults—that’s 12.7 percent of the American population—abuse alcohol or are alcoholics. Few, if any, of these people planned on becoming alcoholics. And many, like my sister, were well informed about the disease before falling victim. I’ve told you her story and alerted you to the role of denial in the hope that someday, if that doubt ever creeps into your mind and you find yourself asking whether you might have an alcohol problem, you’ll remember my speech and take a harder, more objective look at that question. It didn’t save my sister’s life. But it could save yours.