The Internet TESL Journal

Preparing EFL Learners for Oral Presentations

Jane King
jane [at] mail.scu.edu.tw
Soochow University (Taipei, Taiwan)

Introduction

This article provides tips and advice to reduce EFL learners' anxieties for oral presentation. Step-by-step procedures of how to prepare students for oral presentations are included: (1) handout guidelines; (2) grouping learners; (3) choosing topics and gathering information; (4) handling technical problems; (5) holding Q & A sessions; and (6) preparing peer and teacher evaluation forms.

Oral presentation is an effective communicative activity that has been widely adopted by EFL conversation teachers to promote oral proficiency. However, when oral presentations are assigned in class, the teacher will get either complete silence or grumbles from students who find the idea of oral presentations frustrating and intimidating. Students are overwhelmed with the research and communication skills that are necessary for a successful presentation. Some serious students who invest time and effort into an oral presentation do not always get the intended outcomes. Other students try to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible, but do not improve their speaking skills under such stressful situations. Thus oral presentations can be a time-consuming project with no guarantee of a satisfactory performance.

The question of whether the adaptation of a mainly student-centered approach would be appropriate in EFL context, especially in Asia, where are still basically teacher-centered is often raised. Many Asian teachers wonder how many students can learn from such experience because oral presentations take quite a large of amount of class time. An obvious gap between the current level of performance and the intended learning experience often results in a breakdown of language production and frustration for students.

The need for establishing a comfortable and low-threat learning environment, from the perspective of second language acquisition, has long been emphasized and recognized. The less anxious and more relaxed the learner, the better language acquisition proceeds. The delivery of an oral presentation is a source of extreme anxiety. Anxiety causes performance to deteriorate and affects novice speakers' self-esteem and confidence. Particularly for Asian students, oral presentations are a face-threatening activity.

However, oral presentations, if properly guided and organized, provide a learning experience and teach life long skills that will be beneficial to learners in all school subjects as well as later in their careers. Among the many advantages of making oral presentations for the students are: bridging the gap between language study and language use; using the four language skills in a naturally integrated way; helping students to collect, inquire, organize and construct information; enhancing team work; and helping students become active and autonomous learners.

In addition, with the availability of new technology both at school and home, students incorporate video cameras, slide projectors, PowerPoint, VCR/DVD and other visual aids into their presentations which become more exciting and interesting.

Coping with Speech Anxiety and Practicing Presentation Skills

Speech anxiety and limited presentation skills are the major problems that lead to learners' oral presentation failures. In order to help students effectively cope with their fear of oral presentations, it is essential for teachers to acknowledge that speech anxiety is perfectly normal. Having an open discussion on speech anxiety will assist students to feel that they are not alone. Fortunately, we can get some insights from psychotherapy and speech communication literature, which can be used to assist students to overcome their public speaking anxieties. The following tips and advice to reduce their anxieties will certainly better prepare students for oral presentations.

1. Emphasize the Difference Between Spoken English and Written English.

A total dependence on memorization is the pattern followed by most EFL presenters who usually have trouble adapting information to spoken English for the audience. The reading of written English, with complex sentences and low frequency words, further impedes audience's listening comprehension. Instead of using a conversational tone and communicative English, they have long pauses while fiddling with their notes. The audience feels bored when they have to listen to a tedious reading or word-for-word memorized speech from a presenter who reads rapidly and monotonously throughout the presentation. Reciting from passages copied down from references makes the presentations sound canned, machine-like and dull. A listener's attention span shortens when he/she cannot follow the speech and the speaker gets worse when he senses that his listeners are inattentive and losing interest in his presentation. Thus presenters often lose command of their voice, tone, and pacing. Students should use note cards as reminders of what they are going to say. It is much easier to establish rapport with the audience by only referring to the note cards occasionally and make eye contact with the audience.

2. Explain the Purpose of Visual Aids.

There are many advantages in using visual aids during the presentation. Visual aids can create a powerful effect, help keep students' attention, and illustrate main ideas. The basic rule is to use visual aids to support the presentation, not to dominate it. However, the disadvantage of overusing visual aids is that the attention of the audience will be divided and students may stand aside and have visual aids take their place.

3. Help Students to Conquer the Fear of Making Grammatical or Pronunciation Errors.

Inform the learners that they will not be graded by the mistakes they make. Hand out the grading criteria to all learners while assigning this activity. Good English learners are willing to take risks and accept errors. Poor English learners like to use only language that they are certain is correct.

4. Develop Students' Summarizing and Outlying Skills.

If students' past English learning experiences have been basically teacher-controlled and test-oriented, they used to work on memorizing detailed grammatical rules, vocabulary out of contexts and isolated phrases or expressions by which their test grades based on. Learning to produce a well-organized and coherent outline can be very helpful to learners since an outline can give audiences a clear and concise overview of the key points of the talk.

Preparing students these prerequisite skills is important in getting them ready for any project work, otherwise students will feel that the teacher has just dumped them into the sea to struggle for survival. They may feel frustrated and overwhelmed. Passive resistance and grumbling are common signs manifested by students who do not appreciate and are even hostile to this project. Lack of experience is usually the main producer of student stress and nervousness. Experience builds confidence, which is vital to effective oral presentations.

The Teacher's Role

Working with students on oral presentations is a challenging job for teachers because it not only involves training in other disciplines such as speech communication and public speaking, but also demands more of teachers in terms of time and effort in lesson planning and teaching strategies. On the student's part, the student-centered activity asks students to be responsible for their own learning. When a teacher moves from the traditional role of teacher as an authoritative expert to the new role of facilitator of learning, students feel a drastic change. With such a student-led activity as oral presentation, teachers need to have some psychological preparation for meeting the resistance from students, since some of them are not receptive to project learning and are uncomfortable when given autonomy. Furthermore, the importance of creating a supportive learning atmosphere, acquiring interaction skills, incorporating project work, developing cooperative learning skills and applying computer/technology in enhancing teachers' facilitative skills should be emphasized. The teacher is the guide, organizer, consultant, resource person, and supporter.

The teacher's role in oral presentations not only involves preparing detailed guidelines, organizing groups, helping students to select topics, guiding their research and helping them learn the use of various visual aids, but also the holding of Q & A sessions, providing feedback on the sequencing of ideas, and evaluating their performance. Step-by-step procedures of how to prepare students for successful oral presentations are as follows:

Step 1: Handout Guidelines

Since oral presentations involve multi-skills, a carefully planned and constructed guideline will help develop students' receptiveness to oral presentations. Listing instructional objectives and explaining reasons for this activity can increase student participation and may always result in a heightening of satisfaction and achievement.

Step 2: Grouping and Scheduling Student Presentations

It is challenging to plan presentations for a large EFL class. Group projects with 4-5 students in one group will save class time, develop cooperative learning skills and reduce the anxiety of being a single presenter. In order to have a dynamic group, with a feeling of cohesiveness and togetherness, even though learners come from diverse learning styles, the teacher needs to be familiar with a variety of cooperative group techniques.

Step 3: Choosing Topics and Gathering Information

Projects provide opportunities to study interesting topics in detail, and to
explore factors of successful presentation planning. Learners are free to choose any topic they prefer in three categories: event-or goal-oriented; student-initiated; and in-depth topic studies, in order to enhance their self-expression and creativity. Low-level students are not required to choose a topic that necessitates research, although they are encouraged to do so. It is interesting to see the variety of topics presented by students. Some students enjoy making skits of fairy tales. The reason for that may be their limited English proficiency, maturity and interest. Some advanced students' topics deal more with issues pertinent to university students or current events.
Topics presented by students in the past were categorized as follows: performing arts, culture and customs, fairy tales and short stories, current issues, sports, holidays and American culture, the student's field of specialization, hobbies, scripts from the TV shows, entertainment and shows, traveling and tourist spots, and newspaper articles.

Step 4: Handling Technical Problems

It is important for students to know in advance how to handle the
equipment themselves. A discussion about the equal importance of both the rehearsal and the performance will prevent students from technical surprises and panic on the day of the presentation. Usually, students concentrate all their energies on performance and forget to check machines in advance and assume everything will happen as they plan or expect. Often they expect the teacher to fix their technical problems at the last minute. However, wasted class time in fixing facility machinery can adversely affect the presentation, and even be a cause of failure at worst or the need for presenters to represent their material on another day.

Step 5: Holding Q & A Sessions

These short sessions are like quality control that is necessary and helpful in ensuring effective presentations. Teachers can spot possible difficulties students might encounter and prevent the problems.

Step 6: Preparing Peer and Teacher Evaluation Forms

The peer evaluation form (Appendix B) provides the presenters with feedback from other students. Students will not only evaluate their peers, but also learn each group's strong and weak points from presentations. The teacher evaluation form (Appendix C) should be given to students while assigning the work. It can be used as a guideline for students to prepare their presentations. In this way, students are informed in advance of the criteria by which their presentations will be evaluated. It is helpful for students to know the teacher's expectations and grading criteria.

Conclusion

Even though there are some arguments about the appropriateness and constraints of oral presentation in an EFL learning environment as mentioned earlier, however, with structured planning and organization, oral presentations can be a beneficial and enjoyable activity with learners. Both teachers and students are expecting a break away from textbooks. Each week, students come to class with great anticipation and excitement. It is a rewarding experience for low achieving students who had either given up on English or were intimated by past English learning experiences.
The introduction of oral presentations to EFL classrooms provides a rewarding and stimulating experience both for teachers in developing facilitating skills and for students in training themselves to have confident presentations in public.

Note

1The oral presentation activity was developed for sophomore listening and speaking lab classes at Soochow University, Taiwan. It is a one-year required course for all majors. Usually, a class of forty-five students will have a mixture of students from five or more departments.

Appendix A

Assignment Form

Group Number:_________________Presentation Date:______________
Topic:__________________________________________________
Summary of Content:
Resources:__
Group Coordinator:_______________________________________
Group Members:
Name Role Assignment Grade
1_________________________________________________________
2_________________________________________________________
3_________________________________________________________
4_________________________________________________________
5_________________________________________________________

Appendix B

Student Evaluation Form

Topic______________________________________________________
What did you like best about this presentation?
__________________________________________________________
What are some ways to improve this presentation?
__________________________________________________________
Did you learn anything new? What skills or advice could you use in the future?
__________________________________________________________

Appendix C

Teacher Evaluation Form

Group Number____Date____Topic___________________________________________
The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 3, March 2002
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http://iteslj.org/Lessons/King-PublicSpeaking.html