Summary
This downloadable PDF lesson plan for English teachers helps students handle questions professionally. This ESL class material is perfect for teaching communication skills for presentations and meetings, equipping learners with practical strategies and language.
Based on a short video about managing audience questions, this lesson provides a full communication skills workout. Activities include a video comprehension task, a vocabulary gap-fill, and practical exercises on polite language. The lesson culminates in a dynamic role-play where students must use the new techniques to field difficult questions from a "tough crowd," building confidence for real-world business scenarios.
Activities
- Students watch a video explaining four key techniques for handling questions and match each technique to the situation it is best suited for, such as dealing with irrelevant or unanswerable queries.
- Learners analyze and categorize useful phrases for politely deferring answers, redirecting questions to the audience, or asking for follow-up, building their professional communication toolkit.
- A grammar exercise focuses on using conditional structures and polite phrases like "Do you mind if..." to transform direct or blunt statements into tactful, professional requests and deflections.
- The lesson concludes with a role-play where students give a short presentation while classmates interrupt with challenging questions, applying all the strategies learned in a real-time simulation.
Hey everyone, it's Chen and welcome back to my channel. This is another video in my public speaking series. If it's your first time watching the series, there's a bunch more videos. Head on over to my YouTube channel and you can see those.
Lately I've posted a lot of different virtual presentation tips. In today's video I'm sharing with you four different ways that I like to handle questions while I'm presenting or training a room or group of people.
Now this could be an in-person or a virtual presentation, so let's get into the video.
So you're up there, you're standing in front of a room, you are on a conference call, you have a group of people, you are prepared, you rehearsed, you are ready to go with your presentation and someone raises their hand and you're like, did you plan for a question to happen at this time? It's okay.
So there are multiple ways you can handle unplanned questions. Most of the time I encourage questions throughout my presentation, but sometimes I get a question and I didn't expect to get that one.
When I rehearsed, when I showed different colleagues the presentation, I didn't anticipate that question. So there's a few different ways that I like to handle this.
Number one is say, "Thank you for the question. I really appreciate it. I'm not confident that I can give you the best answer right now, so if you could do me a favor and send me an email, I'd love to answer that question for you after my presentation."
Now that accomplishes two things. One, you acknowledge the question, and number two, you put the onus on them to email you.
What I've found in training classes is that some people just like to ask questions. They want to stump the presenter, okay? It's typical.
So when you acknowledge them, let them know that, "Hey, thank you so much for the question," but then you put it on them. Since you're putting it back on them, what I find is most of the time they don't email you.
So the question really wasn't that important. They just wanted to hear their own voice, and that's okay. You let them, they feel good, they feel like they're part of the presentation. This is overall a really good thing.
So if they don't email you after you ask them to email you, you're good. And if they do email you, you can answer the question, you can figure it out then.
A second type of question that you might get is a question about something you're gonna talk about in the future in your presentation. So you don't want to give them the answer now because it's gonna ruin kind of how you were building up to that part of the presentation.
So it depends on your audience. There's a couple different ways I handle this depending on the group.
I might joke around and say, "Oh my goodness, did you steal my slides? You already saw them! Someone showed them to you! I'm definitely covering that in just a few slides." You can do that.
Maybe that's not your audience. If it is a more serious type of audience, you can say, "Thank you so much for the question. I actually have some details in some future slides that I think will help answer that question. Do you mind if we wait to get to those slides?"
Now you acknowledged the question, you let them know you heard it, and you also said I already have an answer for you.
Another way I like to handle questions. This is particularly for that one person who always asks questions, and there's probably not a reason for the question besides they just want to hear their own voice. Again, that's okay.
So what I like to say, or maybe this is someone who throughout the presentation keeps raising their hand, keeps asking questions that aren't really relevant, that aren't really gonna get to the topic that you're trying to cover.
So what I like to say to them is, "Wow, thank you so much. It's a really great question. No one has actually ever asked that, so if you don't mind, can you send me an email and I will try and answer that question for you."
So you're letting this person know you were gonna answer the question and all they have to do is email you. And hopefully after a few times of them doing this, because trust me they will ask more than once, they will learn to just send you an email or speak to you after the presentation with their questions.
The fourth way I like to handle questions. It really depends on the scenario, but when I'm training a class or speaking in front of a big room where people are familiar with the topic, someone asks a question and I don't really know the answer to it, or I sort of know but I want to get the room's participation.
What I say is, "That's a great question. You know what, I'll put that to the room. Who in the room would like to help answer that question? Who in the room would like to answer the question? Who on this call would like to help answer this question?"
And then you can get feedback from different people in the room and everyone has contributed to the conversation and the overall learnings to whatever your presentation is.
So those are four different ways that I like to handle questions while I'm presenting. Thank you so much for watching this video. Have an amazing day and good luck in your presentation.
Vocabulary focus
This lesson introduces key vocabulary for professional communication. It includes verbs like to anticipate (predict questions), to acknowledge (show you've heard), to rehearse (practice), and to stump (ask a question someone can't answer), plus the important business noun onus (responsibility).
Grammar focus
The grammar section focuses on polite language for deflecting and deferring questions. Students practice using conditional structures (e.g., "If you could send me an email, I would find the answer for you") and common phrases like "Do you mind if we...?" to soften their requests and manage conversations tactfully.
