Search

The aim of this exploratory practice research was to gain a better understanding of how tertiary education English as a foreign language (EFL) learners perceive oral presentations (OPs) in the formative assessment of their speaking skills. Participants were 150 pre-service teachers of primary education from the Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Education of Gafsa (HISSEG), Tunisia. Data were collected through a questionnaire and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results revealed that participants showed a positive attitude towards oral presentation (OP) assessment, viewing it as useful in enhancing their speaking abilities and self-reflection and self-assessment skills. They also appreciated teacher feedback. In addition, they demonstrated a relatively high awareness of the purposes of OP assessment. However, participants had moderate awareness of the assessment criteria and low perception of peer feedback. Further interventions are needed to reinforce the strengths and address the inadequacies of OPs as a tool of formative assessment.

This article explores the nature of the construct underlying classroom-based English for academic purpose (EAP) oral presentation assessments, which are used, in part, to determine admission to programmes of study at UK universities. Through analysis of qualitative data (from questionnaires, interviews, rating discussions, and fieldnotes), the article highlights how, in EAP settings, there is a tendency for the rating criteria and EAP teacher assessors to sometimes focus too narrowly on particular spoken linguistic aspects of oral presentations. This is in spite of student assessees drawing on, and teacher assessors valuing, the multimodal communicative affordances available in oral presentation performances. To better avoid such construct underrepresentation, oral presentation tasks should be acknowledged and represented in rating scales, teacher assessor decision-making, and training in EAP contexts.

This action research aims at exploring the contribution of self-assessment checklists on improving oral presentations of two participants that were taking an initial-level English as a second language course at a technician professional institute in Talcahuano, Chile. The intervention was carried out in four weekly sessions in which the participants were trained on the different criteria to assess their oral presentations. The participants self-assessed their work with a checklist and performed a second presentation based on their first self-assessment. Analytic rubrics were also used as an external assessment to compare results from the checklists. At the end of the intervention, a semi-structured interview was conducted to obtain the participants' perceptions about the process. Findings reveal that by developing autonomy, language awareness, and self-reflective skills, the use of the self-assessment checklist supported the participants not only to improve their oral presentation in overall aspects, mainly in fluency and pronunciation aspects, but also to make positive changes in their confidence and expectations about their performance.

While there is a burgeoning of short-term research in self, peer, and teacher assessment, there is a paucity of longitudinal studies in this kind of assessment. Furthermore, oral assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) context is relatively underexplored. The current study was designed to investigate the reliability and validity in 30 oral presentations that spanned over a period of four months, including variables such as the students' gender, ability, and the topic of presentations. The results indicated that reliability indices of all 30 oral assessments were high, ranging from 0.70 to 0.95 as measured by Cronbach Alpha. In addition, validity indices improved over time, with the later presentations enjoying higher validity indices than the preceding ones. The gender of the assessors did not affect the total mean score of the presentations. Also, students' self-assessments were not significantly different from the scores of the teacher, although they appeared slightly higher. There was no significant correlation between self-assessment and teacher-assessment.

IntroductionFor decades, oral presentations have become a common method of assessment in language learning classrooms. Nonetheless, anxiety is a persistent negative feeling pervasive in EFL learners. Although applied linguistic research suggests that there is a relationship between motivation and anxiety, the nature and direction of this relationship remain inconsistent.MethodsTo tackle this concern, this mixed-methods longitudinal study aimed to investigate the growth trajectories of Chinese EFL learners’ L2 motivation and anxiety in oral presentations. The participants were 171 second-year undergraduate medical students who attended an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course. They delivered four oral presentations and reported their L2 motivation and anxiety levels in questionnaire surveys.Results(1) As the number of EFL learners giving oral presentations increased, the L2 motivation levels increased, and the anxiety levels decreased. (2) Those who were initially more anxious about giving oral presentations had higher decrease rates during the four oral presentations. (3) There was co-development but inverse relationships between ideal L2 self and anxiety and between ought-to L2 self and anxiety, although a complete parallel process model was not established.DiscussionThese findings suggest that students’ perceptions of L2 motivation interact with anxiety levels over time but in a sophisticated fashion. Finally, pedagogical implications for EFL oral presentation instruction are provided.

Anxiety in the language classroom affects EFL students, particularly Thai learners. Students become nervous with high tension when performing oral presentations in front of the classroom. Throughout presentations, a significant number of students also worry about the performance evaluation. This study aimed to investigate the overall anxiety level in English oral presentations and anxious situations in two stages: pre-presentation and while-presentation of 72 Thai EFL Engineering Students. The data were collected by the use of two research instruments: a questionnaire adapted from the Personal Report on Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA-34) by McCroskey (1970) and a semi-structured interview about feelings towards before, while, and after the oral presentation, other experienced anxious situations and anxiety coping strategies. The findings revealed that the overall anxiety level of participants was at a moderate level (55.55%). Participants perceived higher anxiety levels while doing the presentation than preparing for the presentation. From the interview, both high and low anxious groups suffered identical problems in a lack of English vocabulary and grammar, including local accents and pronunciations at the preparation stage. During performing, making eye contact with live audiences was the most significant anxiety contributor among high anxiety participants. While low anxiety participants felt uncomfortable answering any unassociated questions from audiences. Only the high anxious group encountered anxiety after delivering the presentation regarding a negative evaluation. Live audiences' reaction was another experienced anxiety mentioned by the high anxious learner. Furthermore, both groups reduced their oral presentation anxiety through various strategies.

In this study, we investigated preparatory class students' perceptions of oral presentations and their functions in EFL learning and teaching in connection with language ability, speech anxiety, and language learning motivation. Our participants were 29 adult EFL students in two intact classes attending a mandatory English preparatory program at a state university, who performed up to three controlled oral presentations following preliminary instruction. We collected data through pre-and post-student surveys, semi-structured interviews, self-reflection forms, and peer-evaluation forms. The pre-survey results revealed that the participants already held positive perceptions of oral presentations despite perceived difficulties. The post data showed significant changes in a positive direction in four variables, namely unwillingness, experience and perception of oral presentations, and language skills. The findings from the qualitative data also confirmed that the participants had benefited from their supervised oral presentations in terms of overcoming their speaking anxiety and perceived significant improvements in a range of language skills including pronunciation and public speaking.

In Malaysia, English as a second language is used as a medium of instruction in most institutions of higher learning. Although it is compulsory to use English as a medium of instruction for all academic programmes, code-switching is still prevalent in the classroom for instance during an oral presentation. This phenomenon is also common among the students in the bachelor's degree in International Business (BIB) at a private university in Selangor, Malaysia that became the context of this study. Hence, this research aimed to explore the BIB students' perceptions on the utilisation of code-switching during oral presentations, and to identify the frequency of its usage in their speech. The participants of this study were 203 students from the Faculty of Business Management and Professional Studies (FBMP) of a private university in Selangor, Malaysia, who are currently doing their bachelor's degree in International Business. The research instrument employed was a questionnaire that was accessible through a google form link by all the 203 students. Descriptive statistics were run to analyse the data collected. The findings of this study revealed that the students perceived positively the use of code-switching during oral presentations. Majority of them agreed that they code-switched to overcome their lack of proficiency in English such as limited vocabulary, and to ease their oral presentations. Most of the students admitted they frequently code-switched during oral presentations. From these findings, important implications and recommendations for future research were elucidated.

The academic oral presentation (henceforth AOP) is an important genre for tertiary students across various courses and disciplines in the university. Despite the importance of AOPs for undergraduate students, relatively little is known about this genre. Using Swales' (1990, 2004) notion of move analysis, this paper compares the rhetorical structure of the introduction sections of academic oral presentations from two different fields, namely English language and Administrative Sciences. The findings show some similarities in the AOPs whereby the introduction section contained three moves, and their related steps were similar to previous studies on the rhetorical structure of oral presentations but with few variations. The linguistic features used were also found to be similar in both corpora revealing that students were able to transfer their rhetorical knowledge and linguistic features from one context to another. This study reveals that variation in AOPs is possible in different courses and disciplines. Thus, having genre awareness can help students adapt their genre knowledge to the context.

This study investigated the influence of co-regulation on public speaking self-efficacy in the context of collaborative oral presentations. A total of 237 students enrolled in an English course at a university in China took part in the research. The factor analysis findings revealed that learners’ co-regulation in public speaking encompass five components: co-planning, co-monitoring, co-evaluation, effort regulation, and help-seeking. Public speaking self-efficacy, on the other hand, pertains to learners’ confidence in aspects including the topic, language use, organization, and delivery during public speaking engagements. The path analysis demonstrated that co-planning was a significant predictor of students’ self-efficacy in terms of the topic and organization. Moreover, the co-monitoring strategy exhibited direct and positive correlations with language and topic self-efficacy. Similarly, the co-evaluation strategy showed direct and positive relationships with language, delivery, and organization self-efficacy. Furthermore, both effort regulation and help-seeking strategies were found to have direct and positive impacts on organization self-efficacy. This study offers valuable implications for educators, trainers, and individuals aiming to enhance their public speaking self-efficacy in collaborative environments.

Raters vary from each other in their severity and leniency in rating performance. This study examined the factors affecting rater severity in peer assessments of oral presentations in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), focusing on peer raters' self-construal and presentation abilities. Japanese university students enrolled in EFL classes responded to self-construal questionnaires and gave and assessed in-class presentations. The results of path analysis revealed that peer raters' self-construal and presentation abilities might be potential sources of subtle biases in peer assessments. Whereas peer raters who placed a high value on maintaining harmonious relationships with others were more likely to give lenient ratings over time, those who were sensitive about being evaluated by others tended to become gradually more severe in their ratings. Furthermore, a peer rater's presentation ability positively predicted rater severity, indicating that individuals with better presentation abilities were more severe in their peer assessments.

The UF MAE program delivers a large-enrollment capstone design sequence that traditionally hosts in-person oral presentations with industry panels. COVID-19 necessitated presentations be conducted online. This transition increased average panelist participation by 50%. Average design team scores fell from 92.4% ([sigma] = 5.6%) for in-person presentations in Fall 2017, 2018, and 2019 to 76.9% ([sigma] = 7.8%) for online presentations in Spring 2020. This aberration was not caused by: (1) larger/more diverse panels; (2) evaluator fatigue; (3) over-scripted presentations; or (4) difficulty transitioning online. Pandemic-induced stress was the likely cause. Industry sponsor feedback and increased participation compel continuation of capstone oral online presentations when in-person instruction resumes.

Peer review has been promoted for decades in order to engage students in the assessment process which then leads to better learning outcomes. This teaching pedagogy is relatively innovative in the Hong Kong language classroom because English as a Second Language (ESL) students are not aware of their responsibility in the language learning process and they think that all assessment-related tasks are the teachers' sole responsibility. The focus on the language system also hinders the importance of skills. Engaging students in the assessment process is challenging. In this Innovations in Practice article, the integration and implementation of online peer review of oral presentations into an undergraduate English Literature curriculum will be presented. The aim of the integration is to bridge the gap between tertiary education and the workplace, equipping students with better oral presentation skills. The two-staged setting could encourage learners to reflect on their performance and bring the feedback forward to the next assessment. Being a reviewer and reviewee provided them with opportunities to learn from the enhanced number of exemplars and peer feedback. They could also realize the discrepancies between their own and their classmates' performances. Such realization allowed them to better understand the assessment requirements and the required skills, and then develop their own personalized plans for improvement before the actual assessment. As a result, they could learn and improve throughout the semester, both inside and outside the classroom. Involving learners in the assessment process and enhancing their assessment literacy seemed to counter-balance the dominance of content-based, summative assessment in the ESL context.

As an essential mode of communication, oral presentation plays an important role in the development of second language (L2) automaticity. However, unless best practices are carried out--massive meaningful practice, when presenting seldom relying on the script, in conversational style, and keeping meaningful eye contact with the audience--oral presentation will not be impactful. This paper discusses through a progressive action research in two Chinese as a second language (CSL) classes how using duo devices with video call Apps including WeChat group video call, FaceTime, and Google Duo can successfully help instructors to prevent cheating during oral presentation and thus uphold best practices.

This study investigated the influence of communication apprehension and anxiety in second-language (L2) learning on oral performance of Japanese university students in terms of F0 (fundamental frequency) analysis. The participants were English-major students (3 males and 6 females) who presented at an oral communication festival for university students. The F0 analysis consisted of a mean F0 and F0 range. The participants' utterances were digitized and analysed with Praat. Participants also completed two structured closed-ended questionnaires: a Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) and a Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). One subscale of PRCA is Speech Anxiety (SA) that measures apprehension in public speaking. Acoustic analysis of F0 was conducted of the utterances provided by the students and their F0 data during rehearsal and the actual performance settings. The results revealed a significant difference in mean F0 between the rehearsal and actual performance. Mean F0 was significantly correlated with SA. These results suggest that students tend to show higher speech anxiety during an actual performance setting that is also reflected by a higher speaking F0.

This study investigated the effectiveness of self-, peer-, and teacher assessments in assessing EFL students' oral presentations. It also examined consistencies and differences among these three methods of assessment. Students' attitudes towards self-assessment and peer assessment were also investigated. This study is a mixed-methods sequential explanatory research in which both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Using an adapted rating scale, 60 Iranian students in four advanced English courses were requested to assess their oral presentations and the oral presentations of their peers. Four teachers used the same rating scale to assess all students' oral presentations. To obtain students' attitudes towards self- and peer assessments, a questionnaire was administered before and after the employment of the rating scale. Students who revealed changes in their attitudes were also interviewed. Although the results showed no significant differences in the three assessment methods, the analysis of the mean scores revealed that teachers employed the strictest scoring criteria while peer assessors used the most lax ones. While the results of peer- and teacher assessments appeared to be consistent, no consistencies were discovered in self- and peer- assessments and in self- and teacher assessments. This study highlights that EFL students' involvement in assessing their own and peers' oral presentations can enhance their motivation to learn.

Proficiency in speaking English is an essential requirement for undergraduates particularly in English as a Second Language (ESL) learning context. However, many ESL undergraduates encounter challenges while learning speaking skills due to anxiety. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of class interactions and oral presentations on reducing undergraduates? speaking anxiety. The study was conducted for a period of 12 weeks using a pre-post quasi-experimental research design. An intact class of 16 undergraduates in a stylistic class in north-eastern Nigeria was selected for the study. A questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data for the study. Findings reveal that the students? anxiety levels significantly reduced in all the five levels of speaking anxiety, psychological anxiety, fear of making grammatical mistakes, fear of negative evaluation, English classroom speaking anxiety, social-environmental factors, and perception factor. The findings also show that the students? speaking anxiety is mostly due to fear of negative evaluation and social-environmental factor. The study makes some recommendations for teachers to help students to overcome speaking anxiety through classroom interactions and oral presentation.

The 1st International Conference on Sustainable Health and Nutrition during the Life Cycle, hosted by Rio de Janeiro State University, convened diverse attendees from various disciplines in March 2024. The conference aimed to democratise knowledge on sustainable health and nutrition while fostering networking opportunities. Abstract submissions came from students, healthcare professionals, educators, and researchers, leading to a rigorous selection process for oral and poster presentations. Embracing sustainability, the conference adopted a paperless approach with digital poster presentations. Keynote sessions addressed pressing issues like childhood obesity prevention and the intricate links between agroecology and nutrition. Discussions highlighted community action initiatives, including Afro-ancestral perspectives on healthy eating and the promotion of urban gardens. The launch of a book on non-conventional edible plants underscored the importance of food sovereignty and security. Engaging coffee breaks showcased products from family farming, featuring nutritional and gastronomic education activities. The conference's success paves the way for future events, signalling a strong likelihood of future editions. Overall, it provided a vital platform for dialogue, community building, and inclusivity in sustainable health and nutrition, setting a high standard for future endeavours.

This action research aims at exploring the contribution of self-assessment checklists on improving oral presentations of two participants that were taking an initial-level English as a second language course at a technician professional institute in Talcahuano, Chile. The intervention was carried out in four weekly sessions in which the participants were trained on the different criteria to assess their oral presentations. The participants self-assessed their work with a checklist and performed a second presentation based on their first self-assessment. Analytic rubrics were also used as an external assessment to compare results from the checklists. At the end of the intervention, a semi-structured interview was conducted to obtain the participants’ perceptions about the process. Findings reveal that by developing autonomy, language awareness, and self-reflective skills, the use of the self-assessment checklist supported the participants not only to improve their oral presentation in overall aspects, mainly in fluency and pronunciation aspects, but also to make positive changes in their confidence and expectations about their performance.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptual ratings and performance evaluations of students who do and do not stutter by professors who require oral presentations. Additionally, this study sought to investigate the influence of behaviors related to communication competence on perceptual and evaluative ratings. Method: One hundred fifty-eight college instructors who require oral presentations in their classes participated in this study. Participants viewed one video of four possible randomized conditions: (a) presence of stuttering + low communication competence, (b) absence of stuttering + low communication competence, (c) presence of stuttering + high communication competence, and (d) absence of stuttering + high communication competence. Participants evaluated student performance against a standardized rubric and rated the student along 16 personality traits. Results: Results of separate 2 × 2 analyses of variance revealed professors' view and evaluate students presenting with high communication competence more positively overall, regardless as to whether stuttering is present or not. Significant interactions between fluency (i.e., presence vs. absence of stuttering) and communication competence (i.e., high vs. low) were found for negative personality traits, as well as delivery evaluation scores. The video for which the student stuttered and presented with low communication competence was rated more positively than the video for which the student did not stutter and presented with low communication competence. Conclusions: Professors perceive and evaluate students who stutter differently from their nonstuttering peers, and those ratings are moderated by levels of communication competence. High-communication-competence behaviors improved perceptual and evaluation scores; however, in the presence of low-communication-competence behaviors, professors overcorrect in the form of positive feedback bias, which may have negative long-term academic consequences.

Previous research has revealed that teacher feedback encourages students' learning of a second language and improves task performance. While former quasi-experimental studies emphasized the positive effects of formative assessment and feedback by teachers on developing oral presentation competence, it remains unclear about the processes during which teachers provide feedback in the form of verbal comments on oral presentations. Therefore, this paper describes an exploratory case study that examines the nature and processes of three experienced EFL teachers' commentary on students' classroom oral presentations in a Chinese university. Data for this study were obtained from the teachers' self-reported accounts of commentary experiences during semi-structured interviews. Findings showed that the three teachers' comments on oral presentations were feedback-focused in nature; however, they diversified their comments in terms of delivery mode, function and focus. The study has implications for future teacher feedback research and EFL classroom practice with regard to the ways in which teachers provide feedback on oral presentation tasks.

Many existing scholarly speaking pedagogies continue to think of oral presentations as performances for an audience rather than dialogic exchanges of research. Such approaches, prominent in Canadian universities, can exacerbate classroom inequities by valuing certain ways of speaking and, by extension, certain speakers: speaking pedagogies, for example, that instruct students to speak “clearly,” dress “professionally,” or even to appear “confident,” can encode prejudices that privilege some voices and bodies over others, perpetuating discrimination based on gender, race, sexuality, language, and culture. This article argues that an equitable scholarly speaking pedagogy will teach students to instead think of oral presentations as opportunities for collaborative knowledge-making. We offer strategies to help students think of scholarly speaking as an integral part of the research process, rather than a stand-alone performance. Drawing on genre-theoretical approaches to academic writing, we argue that this shift can be achieved by using “precedents”—examples of scholarly speaking—to familiarize students with academic oral discourse’s genre conventions, helping students to recognize scholarly speaking as a situated and dialogic research genre. By shifting the goal of academic oral presentations towards cooperative knowledge-making, these strategies at once challenge student prejudices about who can be a “good” speaker and remind students of their responsibilities as audience members, resulting in a more equitable and inclusive classroom environment. To provide a pragmatic example of our approach, we outline the “Classroom Conference” assignment that we developed and evaluated, which uses precedents to prepare students for the oral presentations that are integrated as a step in completing their larger research projects. Analyzing survey data from students who completed this assignment, we recognize its success but also propose strategies for overcoming persisting challenges in getting students to shift their thinking toward an equitable model of scholarly speaking.

This study investigated the influence of co-regulation on public speaking self-efficacy in the context of collaborative oral presentations. A total of 237 students enrolled in an English course at a university in China took part in the research. The factor analysis findings revealed that learners' co-regulation in public speaking encompass five components: co-planning, co-monitoring, co-evaluation, effort regulation, and help-seeking. Public speaking self-efficacy, on the other hand, pertains to learners' confidence in aspects including the topic, language use, organization, and delivery during public speaking engagements. The path analysis demonstrated that co-planning was a significant predictor of students' self-efficacy in terms of the topic and organization. Moreover, the co-monitoring strategy exhibited direct and positive correlations with language and topic self-efficacy. Similarly, the co-evaluation strategy showed direct and positive relationships with language, delivery, and organization self-efficacy. Furthermore, both effort regulation and help-seeking strategies were found to have direct and positive impacts on organization self-efficacy. This study offers valuable implications for educators, trainers, and individuals aiming to enhance their public speaking self-efficacy in collaborative environments., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Hao and Chen.)

Recently, alternative assessment (AA) has gained huge attention in oral ?communication studies. An area that has progressively received momentous concerns in ?the EFL/ESL literature is the employment of the self-assessment method. Despite this concern, ?the empirical data on the college of engineering students' willingness to implement self-assessment, their ?perceptions towards it, and the impact of factors on their attitudes remain scant. Therefore, in ?an attempt to contribute to this research-based, this study tries to investigate the engineering students' perceptions towards self-assessments on developing their ?oral presentation skills in an engineering scope. To accomplish this aim, the study recruited ??110 participants. The study delved into the engineering students' perceptions of ?self-assessment strategy in two stages (pre-and post-questionnaire) in performing technical oral ?presentations. A questionnaire was distributed to the students before and after ?implementing the assessment. The findings revealed that the students possessed positive perceptions pertaining to self-assessment in both ?stages, pre-and post-self-assessment.

This paper investigates English language learners' oral presentation needs, alongside students' and instructors' perceptions towards mobile seamless language learning. The findings will be used to develop a mobile-based learning environment. Interviews with both instructors and students were used to help build a Likert questionnaire which was refined with input from experts. Results reveal that students have a need for oral presentation training in areas such as slide design, presentation-specific language, structure, and body language. Instructors and students are willing to work with peers on oral presentation projects despite lacking previous experience. Deeper exploration from interviews show students believe sentence level language issues are more important than the organization and design of a presentation. Furthermore, instructors expressed problems with incorporating technology and online collaborative learning into language courses suggesting they need more training with learning technology. Students also believed online collaboration would be convenient but difficult to manage, indicating a need for both online and face-to-face collaboration. These findings will help with the development of a mobile seamless language learning framework and app for oral presentations. Guidelines are suggested to help instructors to improve students' oral presentation performance.

This study investigated student perceptions and opinions on an English Oral Presentation Application (EOPA), a mobile learning application designed to assist English learners develop oral presentations and online collaboration skills. This study was part of a Design Based Research (DBR) project which incorporated an adapted Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire to gain insights on students' perceptions towards EOPA. In addition, focus-group interviews were used to discover the external and internal factors involved in this type of mobile learning. Participants were 30 Taiwanese undergraduate students who took part in a six-week training course. The questionnaire results indicated that 37% of students found EOPA to be useful for learning, but 33% also found it inconvenient to use. Furthermore, attitudes towards learning suggested they had some difficulties using the app. To gain a deeper understanding of why students use EOPA and to discover other app-related learning problems, the interviews were explored using a Complex Dynamic Systems approach to find the attractor and repeller dynamic states in the learning system. These included the language and presentation skills, the multimedia learning material, app design, online collaboration, anxiety, and limited self-regulation skills. The findings will be used to refine EOPA and the oral presentation learning framework. The study demonstrates how the discovery of different dynamic states can be used to improve mobile learning design.

The article "Oral Presentations" published in Clinical Teacher explores the motivations and perceived barriers of non-science graduates studying medicine. Through interviews with 12 students at Warwick Medical School, the study identified educational, professional, and personal factors driving their decision to pursue medicine. Participants reported obstacles such as demanding entrance tests, lack of program awareness, academic anxieties, and concerns about career transitions. The findings suggest a need for educators to address specific barriers faced by non-science applicants to support their successful entry into medical school. [Extracted from the article]