Investigating EFL Learners' Perceptions towards the Difficulties in Oral Presentation at Kandahar University

Presentation skills are considered as the most vital proficiencies required in higher education. This research paper examined the difficulties of oral presentation EFL learners encountered, strategies used to make oral presentation well and the perceived role of lecturer in improving EFL learners' oral presentation skills. With regard to achieving these objectives, questionnaires distributed to 150 EFL learners, and face-to-face interviews were conducted. The quantitative data were analyzed through SPSS by conducting frequencies and percentages, independent sample t-test and ANOVA tests. The results of the study revealed that learners had a problem with oral fluency, accuracy and pronunciation during oral presentation, feel frightened when a lot of people are watching them, afraid of being assessed by their classmates in front of the class, having low self-confidence. Furthermore, considering a crucial role of lecturer in improving oral presentation skills, this study also discovered that lecturer has to show learners videos of good speakers for enhancing their presentation skills and lecturer has to give learners freedom to choose their own topics that lower their anxiety. It is hoped that the ideas discussed will provide the learners and lecturers with basic guidelines of how to improve the learners' oral presentation and assist learners to work their way out of anxiety.