Reading off the slide is a safety behaviour. It guarantees the words will be correct, and it is also the single thing most likely to lose the room — because an audience can read faster than you can speak, and once they've finished the slide they stop listening to you.
Why the script feels necessary
Presenting in a second language removes your two best tools: improvisation and recovery. If you lose your place in your first language, you talk your way back. In a second language that feels much riskier, so people write everything down.
The script then creates its own problem. Written English and spoken English are different registers, and a written-out presentation read aloud sounds like a document being performed, which is harder to follow rather than easier.
What to do instead
Put less on the slide, not more. A slide should carry a heading and an image, a chart, or three or four words. If the slide contains your sentences, you'll read them. If it contains a prompt, you'll explain it — and explaining is what the audience came for.
Memorise the first thirty seconds only. The opening is where nerves peak and where a stumble does the most damage to your own confidence. Knowing the first few sentences cold gets you past that, and from there momentum usually carries.
Rehearse out loud, standing up. Most people rehearse by reading silently, which practises a completely different activity. Saying it aloud is the only way to find the sentences you can't actually pronounce at speed, and there are always some.
Write your transitions down. Not the content — the joins. That brings me to the second point · So what does this mean for us · Before I show you the numbers. Transitions are where presentations fall apart, and they're short enough to hold in memory.
Handling the questions
This is what people fear most, and it's manageable with three phrases.
Can I check I've understood the question? — buys time and often clarifies a question that was genuinely unclear.
That's not something I have in front of me, I'll come back to you. — complete, professional, and ends the exchange.
Let me take that in two parts. — turns a sprawling question into something answerable.
None of these require fluency. They require having decided in advance what you'll say.
On accent
An accent is not a presentation problem. Speed is, and volume is, and mumbling the ends of words is. Audiences adjust to an accent within a minute if the speaker is audible and unhurried.
Slowing down is the single highest-value change most second-language presenters can make, and almost nobody does it because it feels unnaturally slow from the inside.