Aims of the study
This study examines the types of feedback which are mainly used by teachers of English at VCU when their second year English – major students give oral presentations; thenceforth, finds out how effectively each type of feedback contributes to enhancing students’ oral presentation skills as perceived by students
With a view to achieving the aims of the study, the research questions will be addressed as follows:
1 What types of feedback are mainly used by teachers of English at VCU when their second year English – major students make oral presentations?
2 How do those types of feedback contribute to the improvement of oral presentation skills of the second year English – major students as perceived by students?
Scope of the study
Due to the framework of this minor thesis, limited time and experience, the researcher cannot discuss all the aspects related to the broad topic of teacher feedback
The research just focuses on finding the types of feedback teachers at VCU give to their
English major students when they deliver their speech Moreover, the researcher hopes to provide significant insights into what teachers do to respond to students’ oral presentation and effectiveness of some certain kinds of feedback in promoting students’ presenting skills which leads to some suggestions for improving teacher feedback and helping students to make the best use of teacher feedback to enhance their oral presentation skills.
Method of the study
In order to realize the aims, this study employs both qualitative and quantitative research methods:
A survey questionnaire was done on 126 second year English-major students at Vietnam University of Commerce to collect their opinions on the types of teachers’ feedback they received and the effectiveness of these types of feedback on improving students’ oral presentation skills
Interviews were conducted with 10 students in order to explore further issues being investigated.
Design of the study
This study has three parts: Part A – Introduction, Part B – Development including literature review, methodology, findings and discussions and Part C – Conclusion
The introduction part presents the rationale, aims and scope of the study, method of the study and organization of the study
The literature review chapter conceptualizes the framework of the study through the discussions of issues and ideas on theories of oral presentation and feedback
The methodology chapter includes situation analysis, data collection instruments and data analysis
The findings and discussions chapter indicates the results of the study, from which major findings and some discussions are revealed
The conclusion part at the end gives a summary of the main issues that have been discussed so far in the study and suggestions for further research
LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Oral presentation 1.1.1 Definitions and characteristics
Oral presentation organization
A number of researchers on oral presentation share the opinion that an oral presentation consists of three main parts: the introduction, body and conclusion (see
Comfort: 1995; Dwyer: 2000; Emden & Backer: 2004) In which the introduction aims to state the topic and get the audience’s attention The learning centre of New South Wales University mentions that “An introduction is like a road map that tells your audience the direction your presentation will take” Because it gives the audience a preview of the presentation, it is necessary to capture their attention and stimulate them at this stage
Although an introduction is advised to be short and briefly informative, it should include
6 purpose of the presentation; providing an outline of the main points and necessary background or some definition of terms Lewis & Reinders (2003:95) adds that at this stage, it is necessary to mention when the audience may ask questions, either to interrupt the presenter during his speech or at the end of the presentation
Once your audience has a clear idea of what is going to come next, you can start developing the body where the main points, examples and evidence are presented These main points need to be arranged in a way that is clear and easy to understand for both presenter and audiences The information in the body should be well – structured, based on a certain organizing principle; it can be chronological order, theme or order of importance, and so on Also in this part, it is the presenter’s duty to informs, persuades or entertains the audience, so an interesting and lively presentation is determining factor To achieve this, the presenter should use personal experience, examples, facts, illustrations or visual aids, and a very important element – humor Gigliotti (1995) supposes that it will not matter how important the content of a presentation is if it is not heard due to lack of interest Graphic illustrations and visual aids can help to clarify the message, add color to attract your audience and help them easy to memorize your presentation as “A picture is worth a thousand words”
The last part of a presentation is the conclusion The conclusion is usually a summary of the main points made in the body of the talk and leave the audience with a final impression of the subject In this part, you should not introduce any new information but take the opportunity to show that you have covered all the points given in the introduction “The ending needs to be dynamic too so that the presentation leaves a lasting impression on the audience and the key points are remembered” (Lewis & Reinders, 2003:95) In this part, the presenter is also suggested to give some remarks or recommendations for the audience to take away as significance or further consideration.
Teaching oral presentation skills
This literature review presents the ideas of some scholars, researchers, and educators who have contributed so much to the literature on teaching presentation skills and whose theories are highly appreciated
As a matter of facts, the purposes of oral presentations are to help learners develop their fluency and increase their confidence when speaking (Underhill, 1987; Vo, 1994)
Making oral presentation brings students a lot of advantages including bridging the gap between language theory and language practice, using four language skills in a naturally integrated way; enhancing skills of group work and making students more active and autonomous in their learning and communicating However, students often encounter a lot of difficulties in delivering a speech Brown and Yule (1983) states that a student who can make good conversations in English may not be successful in oral presentations because the presenter has to take responsibility for creating “a structured sequence of utterances which must help the listener(s) to create a coherence of what he is trying to say” Therefore, it will not be easy for teacher to train students to produce short turns and hope that they will succeed in performing in long turns Underhill (1987) suggests that teacher should ask students to present in a less formal situation or mini-presentation as part of the teaching schedule Each day, a learner takes turn to make his presentation in front of the class He is encouraged to use notes and simple aids such as overhead projector, chalk, black board, pictures but he is not allowed to read his notes aloud At the end of the presentation, it is his duty to answer all the questions related to the topic raised by the audiences Teachers are advised not to intervene in the whole activity from the beginning through the presentation and Q&A session to the final summary He also says that choosing the topic is of great importance The chosen topics should be relevant to the aims of the program and the needs of the learners; it should contain new information or a new viewpoint of an already – discussed issue as well It is also necessary that the chosen topic has the teacher’s agreement to make sure that it is appropriate to the age and ability of the listeners so that it can arouse the learners’ interests and create enjoyable classroom atmosphere
Vo (1994) gives suggestions for teachers when assigning oral presentations (give topics and let students have time to prepare before going to class), in which the procedure of oral presentation should come as below:
1 At the beginning, let students know that all of them will have chances to speak in front of the class
2 Put up a large calendar so that students can choose the date they prefer
3 After the break of every class session, have one student come forward and speak about his/ her topic
4 The teacher sits in the audience during the speech
5 Time limit for each student should be about five minutes
6 Let other members of the class raise their questions and comment until the speaker has finished (if the presenter has difficulty in answering the audience questions, the teacher and other students can help)
7 After each speech, give the speaker some feedback (it is highly recommended that compliments should come before criticism in order not to discourage the speaker)
According to Jane King (2002), confidence is vital to effective oral presentations since lack of it produces students’ stress and nervousness He supposes that in order to build confidence in students, teachers firstly need to “free them from their detailed – oriented learning strategies” by instructing students not only how to organize the main ideas and develop a logical, coherent outline but also how to get the general understanding of the material they read Additionally, teacher should help students conquer their fear of making grammatical and pronunciation errors by informing them that they will not be graded by the mistakes they made In his opinion, the teacher’s role in oral presentation involves organizing groups, helping students to select topics, guiding their research, instructing them the use of various visual aids, providing feedback and evaluating their performance
In brief, teaching oral presentation skills is a really challenging job for teachers because they are required to play a lot different roles at the same time However, with structured planning and appropriate method of teaching and giving feedback, oral presentations can be beneficial and enjoyable activities for learners.
Feedback 1 Definitions of feedback
Feedback is an essential component in all learning contexts and serves a variety of purposes including evaluating students’ achievement, developing students’ competences, and enhancing students’ motivation and confidence (Hyland, 2000) In a purely instructional sense, feedback can be seen as any communication or procedure given to inform a learner of the accuracy of a response, usually to an instructional question (Carter, 1984; Sales, 1993) More broadly, feedback allows the comparison of actual performance with some set standard of performance (Johnson & Johnson, 1993) This view is quite similar with Ramapsasad’s (1983:4) which is extensively used in education literature
“Feedback is information about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system parameter which is used to alter the gap in some way” Littlewood (1981) and Lewis (2002) point out that feedback can be either oral or written, and it means “telling learners about their progress and showing them their errors in order to guide them to areas for improvement” According to Race (2001), feedback can be seen as information communicated to the learner as a result of learning – oriented action in teaching and learning activities in higher education Ur (1996:242) considers feedback as “information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance” According to him, feedback has two main distinguished components called assessment and correction While in assessment the learner is simply informed how well or badly he has performed, in correction, teachers provide some specific information on aspects of the learner’s performance by explaining, suggesting better or other alternatives or eliciting these from the learner Ferris (1999) views feedback as “any response a teacher may give his or her students” To be more detailed, Ypsilandis (2002) shares the idea that feedback is “reaction, a response that is usually triggered and received by the learners and provided by teacher” and as an
“assistance mechanism, a key factor for successful learning, offering support to the learning process”
There remains argument about whether a feedback should contain judgement or not Ur (1996:243) finds the opinion that teacher feedback should be “non - judgemental”
10 unrealistic and supposes that “Any meaningful feedback is going to involve some kind of judgement” However, he also adds that the teacher should try to make more positive judgement in order to help and promote learning in students Robert (2003) shares the same view when proposing that “feedback should only ever be used as a basis for improvement It should not be mistaken for negative criticism and vice verse” Bound
(1991) points out that helpful feedback should make a conscious distinction between the person – who is always valued – and particular acts or specific work – which may be the subject to critical, so no matter how distasteful an oral presentation might be, the common humanity should be respected Weaver (2006) agrees with this view when pointing out the feedback that is considered unhelpful to learning improvement involves comments which are too general or vague, unrelated to assessment criteria, lack guidance and focus on negative To sum up, most researchers agree on the aspects that feedback should not be used as a correction tool only; it should be a motivating factor for students’ learning as well, so most of them suppose that the teacher’s feedback should base on the facts, not beliefs, assumptions or personal opinion
Feedback, according to Kouritzin and Vizard (1999), is continuous, ongoing and interactive; it comes not only from teachers, but also from peers, parents, and friends
Feedback assumes the form of grades, comments, error – correction, body languages, facial expression, conversation, self – evaluation and it may be spoken, written, audio taped or videotaped and so on, yet, in this study, the writer focuses on the types of feedback teachers use in class and its effects on improving oral presentation skills only
1.2.2 Types of teacher feedback on oral presentation
Numerous researchers (Gattullo, 2000; Harmer, 2001; Dweck, 2000; Hattie &
Timperley, 2007) have noted the importance of teacher feedback to students’ learning, yet different researchers have different ways of classifying types of feedback, below are some of their views
Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001) divide feedback into three different types: corrective, evaluative and strategic First of all, corrective feedback focuses on helping learners notice and correct errors In language learning, it explains why responses are correct or wrong and primarily concerns with accuracy Evaluative feedback provides a judgement on students’ performance, and this type of feedback, according to Gattullo (as cited in Al-Fahdi) is widely used in second and foreign language classrooms With evaluative feedback, teachers use words or phrases to show the students the extent to which their performance is good or not Thirdly, strategic feedback aims at helping students to overcome their mistakes by themselves, so in this type of feedback, teachers often give advice on what students should do to improve their performance
Unlike this opinion, Llinares (2005) distinguishes two main types: interactional feedback and pedagogic feedback Interactional feedback includes expressions of agreement, disagreement and acknowledgement (with this expression, teacher responds affirmatively to the content and ignores error by moving on to topic continuation) This feedback reflects “comments made by teacher, with no evaluative or corrective purpose” and aims at enhancing the students’ linguistic production Whereas, pedagogic feedback refers to “acknowledgment or comments made by teacher, with the purpose of correcting and evaluating students’ performance”, it involves making positive and negative evaluation, correcting errors, giving a clue for right answer and prompting the students to respond
Sutton (1997) and Stobart (1993) offer another way of feedback separation which differentiates between descriptive feedback and evaluative feedback According to these researchers, descriptive feedback describes strengths to establish further growth and development, articulates the manner to suggest how performance which falls short of desired criteria can be remediated and gives information to enable learners to adjust to what he is doing so as to get better, hence, this feedback has positive effect on learning
Alternatively, evaluative feedback tells the learner how he has performed in comparison with others or some set standard Shared the same opinion, but to be more detailed, Tunstall and Gipps’ (as cited in Knight, 2003:44) distinguish eight types of feedback
They indentify two major types: descriptive feedback and evaluative feedback in which each of them consists of four minor types Descriptive feedback includes specifying attainment, constructing achievement, specifying improvement and constructing the way
12 forward while evaluative one involves rewarding (most positive), approving, punishing (most negative) and disapproving The former directs student attention to task and emphasizes mastery of the task and further improvement, so it is said to be task – involving; whereas, the later directs student to external forces (rewards or punishment) and focuses on self – worth and comparison, so it is ego – involving This typology of Tunstall and Gipps’ (1996) also indicates that evaluative feedback can be either positive or negative, but all descriptive feedback is positive However, the feature of evaluative or descriptive feedback is not the matter of presence or absence, it is the matter of degree, so there is no clear – cut and sometimes exist some fuzzy areas between them
Additionally, McNamara (1999) and Ayoun (2001) argue that teacher’s oral feedback might affect students’ attitudes toward their learning positively or negatively, thus, feedback can be categorized as positive or negative Positive feedback shows learners that the teacher is interested in their performance and this, as a result, encourages them On the other hand, negative feedback expresses the teacher’s displeasure, frustration or sometimes punishment towards students’ performance
In this study, the researcher follows the categorization of Gattullo (2000) and Harmer (2001), which means that this study will examine the feedback VCU teachers give to students’ oral presentation under three types: corrective, evaluative and strategic and then investigate the effectiveness of each type of feedback on the development of students’ oral presentation skills Therefore, in the next part, the researcher will discuss the effects of teacher feedback on students’ oral presentation skills.
Effects of teacher feedback on improving students’ oral presentation skills
It cannot be denied that feedback, if properly used and given, have a great influence on the learners’ improvement However, the type of feedback and the way it should be given in a specific situation must be taken into consideration in order to achieve this effect Askew (2000), as cited in Terése (2005:8), states that “As soon as we ask for feedback, we open ourselves to the possibility of criticism – something which many of us find difficult to handle” Terése (2005) supposes that when feedback is given with a dominating attitude, the students will most likely be defensive; and when a person become defensive, he will neither listen nor process the given feedback Terése’s study which was conducted in an upper secondary school to find out the students’ reaction to teacher feedback when learning English as a foreign language indicates that oral feedback is of value to students since they get a lot benefit from the feedback Students in this study also say that they are mostly corrected in pronunciation and grammar, beside this, words, expressions, context, sentence structure and verb forms are represented as well
Moreover, they point out an important feature that feedback should be delivered nicely, even when it is not positive one, it should be delivered in positive way so that students do not feel embarrassed or insulted
Another study, carried out by Nugrahenny (2007) to explore Indonesian students’ attitude towards teacher feedback shows that generally teachers and students have a marked preference for teacher feedback Interestingly, student preferences for teacher feedback originate from their awareness that teachers controlgrades and if they do not follow the feedback, teachers might give them low grades Nugarhenny (2007) also points out that students respond favorably to the teacher comments which are explicit and they benefit if teachers use easy language and familiar terms to deliver their feedback
Dinham (2008) supposes that feedback is “vital in schooling and performs a variety of functions including recognizing, correcting, encouraging, challenging and improving student performance” Feedback also keeps students “on track” and is an aid to classroom management Negative feedback can discourage student effort and achievement (Hattie & Timperlay, 2007), so in some cases, bad feedback can be worse than no feedback Dinham (2008) also states that effective feedback needs to be equivalent, constructive and instructive; moreover, it should neither hurt someone’s feeling nor destroy their confidence Book (1983:6) shares the view that feedback on speeches informs the speaker about the audience’s reaction to the speech, this helps to make suggestions for improvement on future speech and motivate the speaker to speak again or to enjoy the speaking
Moreover, Tsui (1995) as cited in Ribas (2010) states that teacher’s feedback, apart from evaluating and providing information related to students’ responses, has many other
14 functions such as acknowledging information or providing personal comments on students’ responses He also emphasizes the role of teacher feedback when showing that when feedback is absent, students know that there must be something wrong or unsatisfactory with their answer Al Fahdis (2005) agrees with Tsui’ opinion when supposes that “giving feedback is one of the key roles that teachers play in the classroom” Both researchers think that this is an important role because the way the teacher handles it can have a strong influence on the learners’ experience Particularly, the way teachers respond to learners can have a powerful impact on learners’ attitudes towards the subject (Tsui, 1985)
Lynch and Maclean (2003) conducted a study investigated the effects of teacher feedback on changes in the spoken language performance of a group of advanced learners of English in the Netherlands In this study, feedback is explicit, arose primarily in prepared presentations The results show that most of the participants “did improve their
“strike - rate” of correct L2 forms in the areas that had been brought to their attention by tutor” (p.20) The most striking finding is the learners’ awareness of their language use including language problems identified in teacher feedback and changes in their language performance For instances, in this very short course of English for Medical Congress, 21 out of 24 participants perceive gains in pronunciation, 8 out of 24 perceive gains in grammar, 2 perceive gains in fluency and two realize an increase in their confidence for speaking The researchers argue that it is right for teachers and learners to consider the provision of feedback as a beneficial element of a speaking skill course What is more, their research suggests that if teachers provide feedback on spoken performance in written form and on an individual basis, and combine it with recording the performance, it can make feedback more accessible, more easily retrievable later and possibly more effective (p.22)
In general, the indispensable role of teacher feedback is shown in the point that teacher feedback reflects to students what and how they perform, showing them their strong points to bring into play and the weak points to improve Therefore, if the feedback students receive on their presentation has the characteristics of a good feedback, if they receive sufficient often enough and in enough detail, it is learning-focused and relevant to the learning outcomes, it can help a lot with improving their presentation skills
METHODOLOGY 2.1 Situation analysis 2.1.1 Context of the study
Subjects of the study
Although English is taught to both English-major students and non-English-major students, the researcher focuses on English major ones who are the target population of this study The subjects of this study include 126 second year English-major students who are studying at the faculty of English – VCU Most of them are about twenty years old and come from different parts of Vietnam – from rural areas to urban ones These students have studied English for at least three years and are going to finish the second year of Commercial English at the time of the study, so they are supposed to get familiar with the learning and teaching methods used at VCU It may be very difficult to select a random sample of individuals due to researcher’s limited time and experience In this case, instead of randomly selecting individuals, the researcher randomly selects classes or groups for investigation Because English major students who belong to a class in their English class may belong to another class in general subjects like macroeconomics or contrastive linguistics (which are taught in Vietnamese), this selection can meet the requirements that the respondents come from different English classes and are taught by different teachers of English.
Data collection instruments
This study was done in the light of both quantitative and qualitative methods in order to get a more detailed and comprehensive picture about what is investigated
Quantitative methods of analysis would be suitable to identify the types of feedback mainly used by teachers of English when teaching the second year English – major students at VCU However, so as to get deep insights into how those types of feedback contribute to improving students’ oral presentation skills in those classes, the researcher
18 supposes that a qualitative method is needed Interviews as a qualitative tool will give participants chances to select, reconstruct and explain details of their experience which can offer insights into students’ feelings, thoughts or opinions – things that may be undetected with quantitative methods
In this study, data is gained through the employment of two research instruments, namely questionnaire and interviews Quantitative data is collected from self – report questionnaire and qualitative data is achieved from semi – structured interviews The questionnaire consists of three parts, which will be discussed in details as follows:
Part 1 : This part is the questionnaire about students’ perception of oral presentation skills and teachers’ feedback Questions 1, 2, 3, 4 are designed to find out students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills Questions 5, 6, 7, 8 are used to detect students’ attitude towards teachers’ feedback
Part 2 : This part includes 10 statements about the frequency of teachers’ using three kinds of feedback namely corrective feedback (statements 1, 2, 3, 4), evaluative feedback (statements 5, 6, 7, 8) and strategic feedback (statements 9, 10) in English speaking class
Part 3 : This part focuses on the effectiveness of the three kinds of feedback mentioned above Of which, statements (1, 2, 3, 4) mention the effectiveness of corrective feedback, statements (5, 6, 7, 8) estimate the effectiveness of evaluative feedback and the two statements (9, 10) investigate the effectiveness of strategic feedback
Table 1: The layout of students’ questionnaire
Part 1 Students’ attitude toward oral presentation skills
Students’ attitude toward teachers’ feedback
Part 2 Frequency of corrective feedback S (1, 2, 3, 4)
Frequency of strategic feedback S (9, 10) Part 3 Effectiveness of corrective feedback S (1, 2, 3, 4)
Effectiveness of evaluative feedback S (5, 6, 7, 8) Effectiveness of strategic feedback S (9, 10)
Additionally, the researcher conducts semi-structured interviews with 10 students who participated in doing the questionnaire in order to obtain more detailed and comprehensive information about the effect of teachers’ feedback on improving students’ oral presentation skills.
Data analysis
After piloting the questionnaire to a small sample of 10 students to check its validity and reality, it was then re-edited and distributed to 150 students a month before the end of school year 2011 – 2012 Finally, 126 questionnaires were returned After receiving the completed questionnaires, the researcher classified and counted them using the functions DCOUNT, AVERAGE and SUM
After analyzing the questionnaires, the researcher chose 10 students among all the respondents to interview, 3 of them were identified as highly appreciated corrective feedback, other 3 of them were considered as prefer evaluative feedback and the other 4 respondents prefer strategic feedback The researcher interviewed them one by one and took notes all the information The content of the interviews then was typed and printed
After all, she read each response and sorted out the frequency of teacher using each type of feedback as well as its effects on improving their oral presentation skills Thus, the following chapter will deal with findings and discussions
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 3.1 Findings 3.1.1 Teachers’ use of feedback on students’ oral presentation
Discussions 1 Students’ attitude toward oral presentation skills and teacher feedback
According to the survey questionnaire, 90.5% of the participants suppose that oral presentation skills are necessary and very necessary in their speaking class 47.6% of them agree that this necessity comes from the fact that it is for them to prepare for their professional ways of working in the future 31% of them share the view that this necessity originates from the reason that their speaking skill is well – practiced through doing oral presentations However, there are still 19% of them finding making oral presentations necessary because it is one of the requirements in the university’s syllabus for speaking
The interviews with students give the researcher the more details about this:
“Standing in front of a group and giving speeches helps me build up my confidence and persuasiveness skills which are very necessary for any job I get in the future Moreover, if
I have to make a presentation of a certain topic, I have to read a lot to find out the information related to that topic, this helps me broaden my knowledge and improve my reading skills.” (S2)
As far as the difficulties students encounter when delivering a presentation are concerned, 33.8% of the respondents say that they feel nervous and lack confidence in front of the audience, making up the highest percentage of all causes, followed by 32.3% who suppose that they are not good at using body language such as eye contact, facial expression, and hand gestures 18.5% of the participants find it hard to make a good voice variation (with stress & intonation) and 15.4% who find it challenging to handle with the audience’s questions Because the biggest challenge the students meet when making an oral presentation is their lack of confidence, teachers should use some kinds of encouraging feedback which can foster and strengthen students’ self – confidence as well as minimize criticism on students’ performance The reason for these difficulties, according to most students (61.9%), is due to their low English proficiency It is amazing to know that 23.8% of the students complain that they are low – motivated and another 9.5% blame the teacher for failing to teach them what a good oral presentation should be
28 learning and acquiring knowledge of English but also an inner cause that pushes students forward in English learning with enthusiasm and willingness Therefore, together with helping students to enhance their English proficiency, the teacher should pay more attention to motivate students in speaking by making the lessons more interesting
As regard students’ attitude towards teacher feedback, 78.6% of the participants agree that they feel encouraged and only 4.8% of them are discouraged when the teachers give feedback on their oral presentations A relatively high proportion of the students feel encouraged when receiving teachers’ feedback indicates that students have positive attitudes towards the teacher feedback, especially on oral presentation Interviews with students give the researcher more details:
“I didn’t have chance to speak English at high school, so when entering VCU, I have a lot of difficulties when making presentation However, my teacher helps me a lot with her feedback and then oral presentation seems to be easier with her instructions and comments” (S10)
“If you finish your presentation without your teacher’s comments, you won’t know to what extent your performance is good or bad, and you may make the same mistakes again and again Therefore, I am eager and encouraged to receive feedback from my teacher so as to improve my presentation skills.” (S1)
However, a number of students feel ashamed because their teachers make them lose face when giving feedback (7.1%) Additionally, 59.5% of the participants think that their teachers’ feedback is effective but insufficient Some of them even suppose that teachers’ feedback is sometimes vague and unclear Therefore, the teachers should be awakened to the dangers of using inappropriate and incomprehensible feedback Take one student’s following answer as an example:
“My teacher often criticizes me in front of my classmates which makes me lose face and feel ashamed I am not confident to make presentation because I am afraid of making mistakes and being criticized.” (S4)
The results of the questionnaire also reveal that a large number of students which are equivalent to 66,7% prefer teachers making comments on their manner of delivering speeches such as hand gestures, body movement, facial expression, and eye contact
Surprisingly, only 19% of them would like the teachers to comment on the accuracy of their target language The fact that students pay more attention on the delivery indicates that they are more conscious of the importance of non-verbal language in making a successful presentation and then a persuasive presenter Moreover, none of the participants prefer teachers giving a mark along without any comments or feedback since they regard this action as irresponsible and unenthusiastic
In summary, most students are aware of the necessity and importance of oral presentation skills and have positive attitude towards oral presentation as well as positive attitude towards teacher feedback Most of them understand the role of teachers’ feedback on their learning improvement in general and on their oral presentation skills in particular.
3.2.2 Teachers’ feedback and its effectiveness on improving students’ oral presentation skills
The results of the questionnaire and interviews indicate that teachers’ feedback have a great influence on fostering and improving students’ presentation skills The findings of this research reveal that the teacher’s strategic feedback has the greatest effect on students’ improvement in presentation skills, followed by corrective feedback and evaluative one It comes as a little surprise to the researcher that strategic feedback is formally underestimated and rarely regarded as influential feedback In this part, the researcher will discuss the type of feedback in order of its effectiveness from the most effective to the effective least one
It is quite surprising that strategic feedback is used with the highest frequency and is regarded by students at VCU as the most effective kind of teacher feedback on their oral presentation The findings of this study show that strategic feedback is an important factor which helps the second year English major students to better their presentation skills Interestingly, these findings are different from those in Gattullo’s study (as cited in Al-Fahdi, H.M.) which indicates that evaluative feedback is dominant in second and foreign language classrooms Although strategic feedback is considered as the one which both has the highest frequency of the teacher’s use and the highest effectiveness of the three kinds of feedback (according to the classification of Gattullo and Harmer), here exists a gap between the frequency of the teachers’ strategic feedback and its effect on improving students’ oral presentation skills 89.2% of the respondents suppose that guiding students specifically and giving them advice on particular situations, especially after their presentation is a useful way to enhance their speaking skills because they are given chances to understand their shortcomings deeply and thoroughly However, only 54.8% of the participants agree that their teachers often and always aim at helping students to overcome mistakes by themselves or give advice on what they should do to improve their performance If the percentage of strategic feedback using cannot meet the needs of the students, it is because this kind of feedback requires a lot of time and the teachers’ enthusiasm Despite the fact that it will be difficult and take teachers a lot of time to use strategic feedback, it is the most effective feedback which helps to perfect students’ oral presentation skill; hence teachers of English at VCU should take this feedback into consideration and adapt their teaching methods to achieve the desired effect
Recommendations
The investigation has found out that the second-year English majors at VCU had positive attitude towards teacher feedback and were fully aware of the important role of oral presentation skills for the professional jobs in the future Most students found the teacher feedback encouraging and beneficial for enhancing their presentation competence
However, the findings showed that teacher feedback did not seem to meet the needs and expectations of the students Therefore, the teachers should balance the frequency of using these three kinds of feedback during the speaking lessons based on the effects of each kind on oral presentation skills in order to get satisfactory results Noticeably, students highly appreciated strategic feedback; it meant that they would like the teachers to focus on giving advice and strategies and let students correct mistakes themselves
This study revealed that most of the second-year English majors at VCU found the teachers’ correction important for their improvement in speaking However, the teacher should not correct all the mistakes students made and should not interrupt their speech to point out errors as this not only made students discouraged and stressful but also hindered communication Instead, teachers should keep recording or taking notes during the students’ oral presentation, and dealing with mistakes later; it is also a good idea for teachers to focus on errors without indicating who made them and asking students to rectify the errors
Furthermore, the teachers often used evaluative feedback with some negative commentary while the second-year English majors at VCU regarded it as ineffective and hoped to receive encouraging remarks This situation leads to an important suggestion that teachers should comment on both strength and weakness of the students’ presentation followed by the principle that strong points and some compliments would be given before teachers discussed the weak points of the students’ performance The teacher’s compliments will show students what they have done well so as for them to keep upholding whereas the teacher’s criticism will indicate where they have gone wrong and what they should take into consideration to raise their presentation competence
Additionally, most interviewees said that lack of confidence was one of the major problems that led to their oral presentation failures Hence, teachers need to be more encouraging and helpful, especially in their feedback This can be done simply by a nod of the head or a friendly smile while students are making presentations or by giving students more praise, compliments and encouragements than criticism when teachers make comments on students’ performance
It is also suggested that when teaching presentations, teachers use a prepared observation feedback form which is divided into sections such as body language, sign posting, and audience rapport After students’ presentations, teachers are highly recommended to give feedback verbally and/or in writing This is due to the fact that students may forget their teachers’ comments right after their performance if they only hear it once Teachers’ feedback in the form of writing gives students chances of thinking twice about the mistakes when they go home It is also necessary for teachers to help students improve both linguistic and nonlinguistic skills as postures and body language such as eye contact, facial expressions are essential factors of making a persuasive and attractive presenter
What is more, together with teacher feedback, teacher should make use of peer feedback When being given the chances to assess other students’ oral presentations, they take them more seriously and will learn from their friends’ experience Students merely watching each other presentations tend to get bored while taking part in peer evaluation activities, they gain a firm knowledge of the form and process of making an effective presentation.
Limitations and suggestions
Due to time constraint and lack of experience of the researcher, limitations are unavoidable Firstly, in this study, the researcher focused on the survey questionnaire and interview of the students, so the results from this research reflected the view of students to teacher feedback only If the researcher spent time to work with teachers, to get teacher
36 would be more objective Secondly, among 150 students who participated in the survey,
126 of them returned the questionnaire to the researcher If there were more respondents, the results of the study would be more worthwhile and reflect the situation more clearly
Thirdly, there are a lot of theories for classification of teacher feedback and each type has certain characteristics However, the researcher focused on the theory of Gattullo and Harmer which divided teacher feedback into three types namely corrective feedback, evaluative feedback and strategic feedback; this also restricted the results of the research
After doing this research, the writer is tempted to find out the effects of teacher feedback on improving writing skills of the students of English at VCU, especially the teacher feedback that can motivate revision of drafts in writing classes Therefore, in the future, if having chances, the researcher will take this into consideration
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This survey questionnaire is designed for my research into the effects of teacher feedback on improving oral presentation skills Your assistance in responding to the survey is highly appreciated and you will not be identified in any discussion of the data
I In completing these questions, please choose the answer by circling the letter next to your choice or expressing your ideas in the blanks
1 How necessary do you think it is to learn oral presentation skills in your speaking class?
2 What do you think is the reason for that necessity? (You can choose more than one)
A Making oral presentations is one of the requirements in the university’s syllabus for speaking
B Speaking skill is well – practiced through doing oral presentations
C It’s a good way to evaluate one’s ability in speaking
D It is for us to prepare for our professional ways of working in the future
3 In what way do you find delivering a presentation difficult? (You can choose more than one)
A I cannot make a good voice variation (with stress & intonation)
B I am not good at using body language such as eye contact, facial expression, and hand gestures
C I feel nervous in front of the audience
D I do not know how to handle with the audience’s questions
4 What do you think are the reasons for such difficulties? (You can choose more than one)
A Our English proficiency is quite low
B Giving oral presentations is new to us
D It’s our teacher that fails to teach us what a good oral presentation should be
5 In what way do you like your teacher to give feedback on your oral presentations?
A Teacher interrupts students’ speeches to point out errors
B Teacher waits until students finish their presentation, points out the errors and corrects them
C Teacher waits until students finish their presentation, points out the errors and asks students to correct them
D Teacher gives a mark along without any comments or feedback
6 How do you assess your teacher feedback on your oral presentations?
7 What would you like your teacher to comment on your oral presentations?
A The content of your presentations
B The design of your presentations
D Your manner of delivery (hand gestures, posture, facial expression, eye contact, volume…)
8 How do you feel when your teacher gives feedback to your oral presentations?
C feel ashamed because teacher feedback makes you lose face
II The following table is types of feedback that your teachers may use to respond to your presentations in English lessons Please put a tick (v) in the column to give your opinion
Never Seldom Sometimes Often Always
No Types of teachers’ feedback 1 2 3 4 5
1 Your teacher helps you notice and correct mistakes yourself
2 Your teacher directly corrects your mistakes
3 Your teacher clarifies your utterance by asking questions like “what do you mean by…?” or “Excuse me?”
4 Your teacher draws your attention to mistakes by repeating your mistakes with a change in intonation
5 Your teacher criticizes you when you make mistakes
6 Your teacher gives comments/explanation for her mark on your presentation
7 Your teacher compliments on your good performance
8 Your teacher indicates to what extent your performance is good or not
9 Your teacher gives you advice on how to improve your performance
10 Your teacher suggests ways to help you overcome mistakes yourself
III How effective is your teachers’ feedback on oral presentation skills? Please put a tick (v) in the column to give your opinion
No Teachers’ feedback Very effective Effective Not
1 Your teacher helps you notice and correct mistakes yourself
2 Your teacher directly corrects your mistakes
3 Your teacher clarifies your utterance by asking questions like “what do you mean by…?” or “Excuse me?”
4 Your teacher draws your attention to mistakes by repeating your mistakes with a change in intonation
5 Your teacher criticizes you when you make mistakes
6 Your teacher gives comments/explanation for her mark on your presentation
7 Your teacher compliments on your good performance
8 Your teacher indicates to what extent your performance is good or not
9 Your teacher gives you advice on how to improve your performance
10 Your teacher suggests ways to help you overcome mistakes yourself
Thank you for your cooperation!