I challenge you to consider using a metaphor or simile the next time you plan your health presentation. But what exactly is a metaphor?
metaphor – n. figurative use of words in which a word or phrase is used to mean something other than what it usually means. For a presenter writing his presentation, metaphors are as important as painting to an artist.
When giving a presentation, you can add creativity through the use of metaphors. For instance;
If you were talking about lead potato chips and pike behavior in young children, you might say “lead potato chips are potato chips in the hands of small children with pica.”
Now let’s take this a little further. In the potato chip example, you could take a bag of potato chips and open it in front of the audience and pour them into a bowl. You could joke and say that it is difficult to eat a single potato. Also, you can show the small fries on the bag and point out the relative size of the small fries and the small size of the lead fries that can poison our children.
Wow! Can you see this working for you?
Take a few minutes to think about how you can apply this to your prevention topic.
A simile, it looks a lot like a metaphor
Simile -n. a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two different things, especially a sentence that contains the word “like” or “like”, for example, “as white as a leaf”
The main difference here is the use of the term “as a”. If I say in my presentation: “Our children are often treated like a canary in a mine. Canaries were often placed in coal mines to determine if they were poisonous gases. Once the canary died, everyone was sure that there was gas in the cave “.
Very often our children are like canaries. They must be poisoned before we look for the source of lead in our homes.
Now that is a simile that has been used frequently. You can use this expression method to apply it to other parts of your presentation. You just need to think a little beyond the facts of your presentation for creative uses of language.
Or you may be doing another prevention topic like FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders). Some presenters use a common technique of cracking an egg and cooking it in alcohol during the time of their presentation. You could use the egg as a simile of a child’s brain. “A child’s brain is like this egg.
YOU CAN USE METAPHORS AND SIMILARS TO CONNECT TO A PROP.
In the case of potato chips, your accessory is a bag of chips and a bowl. In the case of the canary, you could have a plastic or rubber bird.
Much will also depend on the size and availability of your accessory. For example, if you want to use a large accessory, you need to consider how you plan to get to the presentation and how much help you have.
So after you know what you want to say, think about how you want to say it.
REMEMBER TO TAKE THE PUBLIC INTO ACCOUNT
As you already know, the simile or metaphor you choose to use will often differ depending on your audience.
I will discuss this in another article.
TASK
Think of popular advertising slogans that are simile, for example:
“Chevy like a rock”
“Winston tastes good how he should have a cigarette”
“A day without orange juice is like a day without sun”
CAN YOU PRODUCE SOME SIMILAR SLOGANS THAT YOU CAN USE IN YOUR PRESENTATION?
Something that your audience will remember that has a positive impact?
You can even change some of the popular ones that already exist and make a replacement. For instance:
“A day without laughter is like a day without hope”
Regardless of what you choose to do, the choice to get more creative in your health presentation is up to you.