How do you present in English over Teams or Zoom?
In three phases. Set the screen up first and check what people can see: "I'll share my screen now." — "Can everyone see my screen?" Then keep the room with you by saying how questions will work: "Feel free to use the chat for questions." — "I'll pause after each section." And close cleanly: "I'll stop sharing now." — "I'll send the slides after the call." — "Over to you, Anna."
- Announce with "I'll" or "I'm going to": "I'll share my screen now", not "I share now my screen".
- Check with "can" and "everyone": "Can everyone see my screen?", "Can you hear me?"
- Hand over in four words: "Over to you, Anna" — or, more fully, "I'll hand over to Anna".
B1 · Presentations · 10 minPresenting Online, taught brick by brick.
A structured ten-brick lesson for B1 learners. Hear a typical opening in context, learn the lines for sharing your screen, inviting the chat and handing over, then practise them in interactive tasks before a final test. The whole arc takes under ten minutes and nothing requires a signup.
- CEFR levelB1 · Intermediate
- Time to completeAbout 10 minutes
- Presentation arcSet up — keep them with you — hand over
- Bricks10 blocks
01 / 07
Why an online talk needs more language, not less
In a meeting room your body does half the facilitating. You see who is nodding and who is frowning, you point at the screen with your hand, and everybody watches you reach for the laptop. Over Teams or Zoom all of that falls away: the tiles are small, cameras stay off, and nobody can see what you are clicking on your machine. What your body used to handle, you now have to put into words. That is why a good online talk contains noticeably more announcements than the same talk in a room: you say what you are about to do, you check that it landed, and you say how the group should react. At first this feels like a lot of extra talking. In practice it is three or four short sentences that you learn once and then reuse in every meeting. Those sentences are what this lesson gives you.
02 / 07
Setting up: announce the screen, check what people can see
The first seconds decide whether people can follow you at all. Two sentences are enough. The first announces: "I'll share my screen now." The second checks: "Can everyone see my screen?" A typical German hurdle hides here. German alle happily stands alone as a subject — "Können alle meinen Bildschirm sehen?" — but a standalone English all sounds formal and unusual in this question. The subject is everyone or everybody: "Can everyone see my screen?" Can matters just as much. With perception verbs such as see and hear, English asks with can: "Can you hear me?" — "Do you hear me?" is grammatical too, but it can sound emphatic to a native ear. A third, friendly line covers the emergency: "Let me know if you lose me." That gives the group permission to interrupt you before half of them are left behind.
03 / 07
Announcing, not translating: will, going to and word order
"Ich teile jetzt meinen Bildschirm." This sentence tends to get translated word for word in your head, and two things go wrong on the way. First the tense: German uses the present for an announcement, and the English present simple does not normally cover that. For something you are announcing as you do it, you take "I'll share my screen" or "I'm going to share my screen." A plain "I share my screen" sounds more like a habit, unless you are narrating a demonstration step by step. Second, word order. German lets jetzt sit between the verb and the object. English keeps a verb next to its object; the time expression goes before or after: "I'll share my screen now.", "Now I'll share my screen." Otherwise you get the tell-tale "I share now my screen." The same pattern covers your other announcements: "I'll put the agenda up first.", "I'll open a poll in a moment." Verb and object stay together; the time expression sits outside.
04 / 07
Keeping a remote audience with you: chat, names, reactions
Online you hear no murmur and see no frowns, so you have to collect signals actively. The cheapest tool is the chat: "Feel free to use the chat for questions" — a fixed phrase with the infinitive that sounds friendly and forces nobody to unmute. The second tool is the planned pause: "I'll pause after each section for questions." Now the group knows it does not have to cut in immediately, and you keep your structure. Third comes the quick poll: "Let's take a quick show of hands" or "I'll drop a poll in the chat — just click one." And fourth, the name. "Sabine, would you like to add anything here?" brings a silent group back, because suddenly somebody is specifically meant. It helps to say in advance that you will call on people by name, for instance with "I'll ask each of you for a quick reaction at the end" — then it feels like an invitation rather than a test.
05 / 07
Steering questions: answer now or park it
As soon as you invite questions, you also need a sentence for postponing them — otherwise your structure falls apart after five minutes. The standard line is: "That's a good question — I'll come back to that in the Q&A." It takes the question seriously without knocking you off course. Watch the form: I'll for a promise you make in the moment, and come back to with to. When you do answer a question immediately, say so out loud as well, so the room understands the rule: "Let me take that one straight away, because it changes the next slide." And when a question sits in the chat, read it out before you answer: "Markus asks whether the pilot includes the Berlin team — yes, from March." Not everyone has the chat open, and reading it out keeps your talk followable for people who are only listening.
06 / 07
Closing and handing over
The end of an online presentation has two parts: the screen and the person. For the screen, say what you are doing before the picture disappears: "I'll stop sharing now." After stop you use the -ing form when you end the activity; "stop to share" would mean breaking off something else in order to share. Add the promise for later: "I'll send the slides after the call" or "I'll put the deck in the chat now." The second part is the handover, and it is shorter than German speakers expect: "Over to you, Anna." Four words, no verb. A little more formally you can say "I'll hand over to Anna, who will take you through the timeline." The literal version of "Ich gebe an Anna weiter" produces nothing usable: "I give over to Anna" leaves people puzzled, while "I'll hand you over to Anna" works when you address the group — "you" is then the audience.
07 / 07
Where this lesson ends and the next one begins
This lesson covers online delivery: sharing your screen, orienting the group, the chat and participation, steering questions, and the handover. It does not cover the technical failures themselves — audio cutting out, a frozen picture, somebody still on mute. Those belong to Tech Problems in Video Calls (B1), and the lines there sit neatly alongside your announcements when the connection wobbles. How you get into a presentation at all, introduce yourself and announce your topic belongs to Opening a Presentation (B1); this lesson picks up where the screen comes in. And when the question round really starts at the end, you need the language for checking, rephrasing and politely deferring from Handling Questions (Q&A) (B2). In a real video conference all three work together. While you are learning, take them one at a time — you will find them linked at the foot of this page.