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HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH - - GRADUATION RESEARCH PAPER HUFL ENGLISH-MAJORED FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS DOING ENGLISH ORAL PRESENTATIONS Student’s name : NGUYEN DIEU LINH Class : Anh SPK13A Student’s code : 16F7011029 Supervisor’s name : Pham Hong Anh, Ph.D Hue, 2020 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that the information reported in this paper is the result of my own work, except where due reference is made The data and findings are true and with permission from associates i ABSTRACT Increasing student-talking-time in an English speaking class has been one of the main concerns in modern language teaching methods nowadays In this context, English oral presentation is considered as a satisfactory suggestion to help teachers and students achieve the teaching and learning goals English oral presentation is obviously a stimulus to motivate students, enliven the classroom atmosphere, build up the student-student rapport, and cognitively help students‟ learning procedure This study is an attempt to make an investigation into the students‟ attitudes toward doing presentations in English classes at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University (HUFL) It has been constructed to obtain the aims of examining the issues as well as the attitudes of first-year students toward doing English oral presentations Most importantly, the effective ways to improve to English oral presentation skill, the researcher‟s local context, would be definitely illuminated The research instruments for collecting the data were questionnaire and interview The questionnaire was given to the students to identify the frequency, the attitudes, the issues which students experienced and ways to improve effectively of doing oral presentations in English classes The interview was focused on the feeling, issues they faced when preparing and doing English oral presentations and some suggestions for teachers to help students improve their English oral presentations skill The data analysis showed most of student felt anxious or nervous when starting English oral presentations and the difficulties that students experienced during their presentations Moreover, a large amount of expectations for teachers to help improve students‟ presentation skills effectively was shared from students‟ perspectives Incidentally, the limitations of the study were examined, and a number of potential avenues for future research were suggested ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This study investigates English-majored first-year students‟ attitudes towards doing English oral presentations in class at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University During the process of the investigation, I had to face dozens of difficulties as this is the first time I have conducted a complete research paper I would never have been able to finish this study without the guidance of my supervisor, help from teachers and students as the research participants, and support from my family First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Pham Hong Anh for all her enthusiastic and constant encouragements from the beginning to the end of the study Her whole-hearted instructions, valuable advices as well as her patience with my mistakes play an important role in the fulfillment of my study My sincere thankful words would be sent to both teachers and students who have been enthusiastically helping me perform the process of collecting data, which contributed a vital part to my paper Last but not least, my warmest thanks would go to my family members and friends for their continuing practical support, inestimable assistance and great care for me during the time I this research, especially in the moments of difficulty Nguyen Dieu Linh iii CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii CONTENTS iv TABLE OF FIGURES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION .1 1.1 Background to the study .1 1.2 Research aims .2 1.3 Research questions .2 1.4 Research topic 1.5 Research scope .3 1.6 Research significance 1.7 Organization of the thesis CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Oral presentation in EFL classes 2.2.1 Definition of oral presentation 2.2.2 Importance of oral presentations 2.2.3 EFL students‟ attitudes towards doing oral presentation 2.3 Issues about EFL student doing oral presentation .10 2.4 Previous studies 12 CHAPTER 17 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17 3.1 Introduction 17 3.2 Research approaches 17 3.3 Research setting 18 iv 3.4 Participants 19 3.5 Data collection instruments 19 3.5.1 Questionnaire 19 3.5.2 Interview 20 3.6 Data analysis 21 CHAPTER 22 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 22 4.1 Introduction 22 4.2 The English-majored first-year students‟ attitudes towards doing of doing English oral presentations 22 4.3 The issues students consider before doing the English oral presentations 26 4.4 The issues students experience when they English oral presentations 27 4.5 Some effective ways to improve English oral presentation skills at HUFL 30 4.6 Discussion 31 4.7 Summary of the chapter .34 CHAPTER 35 CONCLUSION 35 5.1 Introduction 35 5.2 Restatement of the study purposes .35 5.3 Summary of the findings 35 5.4 Implications of the study 36 5.5 Limitations of the study .37 5.6 Recommendations for further research 38 5.7 Conclusion 38 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX 43 v TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 4.1 The frequency of doing English oral presentations in classes 22 Figure 4.2.The students‟ attitudes toward doing English oral presentations in classes 23 Figure 4.3 The importance of doing English oral presentations in classes 25 Figure 4.4 The activities students spend most of time to prepare 26 Figure 4.5 The students‟ feeling of doing English oral presentations in classes .27 Figure 4.6 The field students can develop by doing English oral presentations 28 Figure 4.7 The main difficulty of students‟ oral presentations in English .29 Figure 4.8 Students‟ opinions on teachers‟ roles in developing oral presentation skill .30 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS COVID-19 : Corona Virus Disease 2019 HUFL : Hue University of Foreign Languages EFL : English as a Foreign Language vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study Oral presentations are a great way to have students practice all language systems areas (vocabulary, grammar, discourse and phonology) and skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening) They also build confidence, and presenting is a skill that most people will need in the world of work It is commonly found that students who are good presenters are better communicators all round, since they are able to structure and express their ideas clearly (Tom Hayton, 2010) After completing a project, a presentation is a channel for students to share with others what they have learned It is also a chance to challenge and expand on their understanding of the topic by having others ask questions And in the world of work, a confident presenter is able to inform and persuade colleagues effectively Oral presentations can also form a natural part of task based learning By focusing on a particular language point or skill, the presentation is a very practical way to revise and extend book, pair and group work The audience can also be set a task, for example, a set of questions to answer on the presentation, which is a way of getting students to listen to each other Normally the presentation will come towards the end of a lesson or series of lessons that focus on a particular language or skill area It is a type of free practice This is because the students need to feel relatively confident about what they are doing before they stand up and it in front of other people Especially, in the role of an English-majored student, the researcher found herself a number of issues existing in doing English oral presentations in the university context Specifically, when she was a first-year student, the issues relate to her psychological characteristics, which are mainly concerned with shyness and anxiety, which possibly cause the student to be reluctant to speak After years in university, the researcher herself has gradually overcome such psychological issues and gained more experience in presentations such as psychological management, speaking English fluently, more confident to interact with audience and proficient use of Power point to support her presentation This improvement is resulted from many sources including a significant role of the teacher Based on the issues and personal experiences above, the researcher decided to investigate the attitudes towards doing English oral presentations of HUFL English-majored first-year students if they are like her or not 1.2 Research aims This study is to make an investigation into the attitudes towards doing English oral presentations of first-year students at the University of Foreign Languages, Hue University Specifically, it has been constructed to obtain the aims of examining the students‟ attitudes toward doing English oral presentations as well as issues before and while they English oral presentations at HUFL Most importantly, this study recognizes the current situations as well as propose solutions to improve English oral presentation skill for English-majored first-year students 1.3 Research questions The study attempts to answer the following questions: What are HUFL English-majored first-year students’ attitudes towards doing English oral presentations? What issues first-year students consider before doing the English oral presentations? What issues first-year students experience when they English oral presentations? What first-year students expect their teachers to help them to improve English oral presentation skill? From the Figure 4.8 interpretation, it is obvious that most of the students need teachers‟ tips for ways to be confident when doing presentations (68 out of 93 students) as well as source of information to plan content effectively (54 out of 93 students) Moreover, teachers‟ support to interact with audience, guidance students how to speak English fluently and check content before doing English oral presentations are also crucial for learners which is admitted by over 40 students However, the number of students assuming that teachers should impart the techniques to design PowerPoint (25 out of 93 students) In addition, in the interview, from the difficulties that the students encountered, they also made wishes for teachers to help students improve their presentation skills Student B hoped that when she pronounced wrongly or had problems with the presentation, the teacher would correct it right away to guide her Student E hoped the teacher would increase the number of presentations so that she could become more accustomed and confident to speak English fluently in front of a lot of people Student F thought that the teacher should suggest the words when students were confused so they can continue presenting and create atmosphere so they can be more confident Student G shared that the teacher should organize some lessons on pronunciation, psychological management skills in presentations This result was entirely true with the concept of affect learners‟ oral communication are mainly shyness, pronunciation difficulty, inappropriate uses of vocabulary and grammar (Khan, H.R., 2007) 4.6 Discussion Data in the study obtained from the questionnaire and interviews were analyzed The results were all thanks to first-year students giving their detailed opinions as well as their own attitudes toward doing oral presentations they have experienced First, as first-year students, the study showed real emotions during presentations by people who had just moved from high school to university Because in the high school environment they rarely oral presentations in class 31 and they less practice speaking in English before class This can be explained for the emotions like anxiety, nervous or tremor Moreover, the participant subjects of the study were first-year students, which aimed to show some salient issues in attitude when doing presentations In the first-year of university, most of them are starting to get used to speaking in English, particularly in public That means they are starting to build up courage and confidence as positive feelings, which takes time Therefore, a possible reason why HUFL English-majored first-year students have those attitudes towards doing English oral presentation, as shown in the findings, may come from the fact that they have less presentation experience This result is equivalent to that one of Gömleksiz (2010) The researcher found in the students„ attitudes evaluation pertaining to English language learning in terms of several variables, revealed significant differences between the attitudes of students in terms of grade level, department variables It found that sophomores or second year students‟ attitudes were more positive than first-year students in terms of selfconfidence, interest, teacher subscales and usefulness In other words, second year students‟ tendency towards learning English via oral presentations was much higher than first-year students‟ Second, it is important to know possible causes of anxiety that students have to undergo With regard to this issue, the students also asserted their specific reasons Some students thought that they were afraid to say wrong; some were afraid of the local accent like Quang Nam accent; some were afraid to speak in front of the crowd; some wanted to speak fluently with expressive emotions; and some others were not used to oral presentations Those issues completely align with Durer and Sayar‟s research (2013), in terms of anxiety, when the feelings of in and out of class anxiety levels are measured; it is found that the anxiety level of student increases once they are in class Third, from the findings about attitudes and emotions during oral presentations, it can be seen that the psychological preparation for public speaking may be as important as or better than what is being said, the content Understanding 32 the importance of careful psychological preparation, most students said that they only spent a little time preparing content before the formal presentation, and for the rest of the time, they practice speaking fluently in front of the class and practice keeping calm so that their speech is smooth Additionally, some of students believed that they should increase contact with more people, communicate more and should not worry too much about the feelings of the listener to gradually overcome the psychology of standing in front of the crowd In term of communication, Robby (2010) addressing a foreign English speaker also stated that some people avoid communication in the most crucial and serious situations only to avoid embarrassment In fear of making mistakes if someone stops speaking and practicing enough, it cannot, as a matter of fact, help improving speaking English skills Last but not least, reported difficulties students encounter also showed the crucial role of the teacher before and during the students‟ presentations On the one hand, before a presentation, teacher should organize a number of pronunciation lessons, seminars to share psychological management tips in the presentation Teachers should also increase the number of presentations so students can gradually get used to speaking English in front of a large audience in order that they feel more confident On the other hand, teachers can also help students to improve their skills during their presentations For instance, some students claimed that teachers should correct pronunciation at the right presentation time, suggest words when students were confused so they continue to presentations or create a relaxing atmosphere for students to be more confident in class Prof Md Fazlur Rahman (2014) expressed his concern that the teachers‟ roles in teaching speaking English The study set a framework of the teachers help presenters to overcome the challenges mentioned in this paper It is expected that the strategies mentioned in this paper will be effective for „better oral presentation in English‟ in the classes and formal occasions It can be useful for those who have the aspiration to impress their audience not only by their language skills but also by applying essential techniques 33 for smart presentation It is noteworthy that formal presentation is related to both good language skills and essential non-verbal communication techniques since the audience actually likes to enjoy the entire session visually and listening to the speakers 4.7 Summary of the chapter To sum up, in this study, the students‟ desire to better their oral presentation outcomes in terms of both style and content if they are given the opportunity to present for the next time supports the positive effect in favor of the use of oral presentations in speaking classes The current study also yielded similar results to the ones obtained by Alshare & Hindi (2004), Gömleksiz (2010) and Durer and Sayar (2013) However, the study differs from them in that it presents the attitudes and difficulties students encounter when right presentation time 34 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 5.1 Introduction This chapter presents (1) restatement of the study purposes, (2) a summary of the research findings, which lead to (3) some pedagogical implications, (4) limitations of the study, (5) suggestions for further research, and (6) conclusion of the whole paper 5.2 Restatement of the study purposes This study is to make an investigation into the attitudes toward doing English oral presentations at University of Foreign Languages, Hue University This study has done the research aims which had set out initially It has been constructed to obtain the aims of examining kind of attitudes toward doing English oral presentations as well as the issues of first-year students before and during doing English oral presentations at HUFL Most importantly, this study recognizes the current situations as well as propose solutions to improve the English oral presentation skill for English-majored first-year students at HUFL, the researcher‟s local context 5.3 Summary of the findings For research question 1, students‟ attitudes toward doing English oral presentations at HUFL were revealed 86% of students had agreement to the statements with the point of 3, and of the 5-level-scale This means that doing English oral presentations was quite concerned by the majority of students It can be seen that the attitude of students when doing English oral presentations is not simply to like or dislike, but having feelings like "confident" is more important However, some students didn‟t feel confident at first, but they overcame the initial anxiety and then felt more positive For research question 2, the answers for the issues students faced before doing English oral presentations were preparing content for a few days in advance 35 and then spending a lot of time practicing speaking, especially speaking in front of many people; some others spending time first on composing the content and then learning by heart before doing real presentation in class For research question 3, majority of students pointed out the issues which they experienced when doing English oral presentations were that they didn‟t have good mood when presenting in front of crowd such as trembling, nervous and worried Additionally, the issues namely speaking English fluently and managing PowerPoint were mentioned by students For research question 4, this attempt in the study was exploring the effective ways to improve English oral presentation skill for students They expect their teachers shared their own experience in giving tips for ways to be confident when doing presentations, supporting students to interact with audience and guiding students how to speak English fluently 5.4 Implications of the study The findings of the study suggest some pedagogical implications as follows: For teachers Firstly, it indicated that students highly appreciated the use of English oral presentations in classes As a result, the use of this activity in the classroom should be advocated and encouraged by the teacher in order to motivate the students, especially shy and timid ones, arouse their interest in the speaking classes, create opportunities to practice speaking, and so on Also, the teacher should develop instructional plans with more interesting materials, extend the scope of applying oral presentations and incorporate it in teaching many other language skills and knowledge aspects, but not merely speaking However, the use of oral presentation is not always appropriate with all topics or subjects; hence, teachers should pay more attention to choosing the most effective methods related to classroom arrangement It means that teachers can diversify the teaching techniques with individual, pair or big team If oral 36 presentations are used any times, they will be boycotted by students because of the boredom; and the negative effects will influence the teaching and learning quality With regard to observation and collaboration issues, language teachers are suggested to encourage cooperation and collaboration in speaking classes It is clear from the findings that students learn from each other and that can be a motivational factor The students‟ great interest in the open and group discussions also proves this Some challenges were also discovered in students‟ speaking competence There exists a situation in which students‟ language knowledge does not help students present the assigned task In this situation, teachers are recommended to equip students not only with vocabulary, grammar, but also with background information in advance to pave the wave for optimizing oral presentations benefits in class With some high-level speaking topics, it is suggested that teachers should know how to control the difficulty level of the task; otherwise, it would defeat learners For students Students should have positive attitude when doing oral presentations by deeply exploring the assigned tasks, enthusiastically giving, exchanging ideas and contributing to group work They are also advised to actively get involved in learning process of a speaking class, try to overcome shyness and torpor to improve language competence as well as learning spirit 5.5 Limitations of the study This study has a number of limitations despite the researcher‟s attempt, the most obvious of which is the small size of participant number Actually, the number of student participants is not large in comparison with the total number of first-year students of English However, the adoption of both quantitative and qualitative approach helps overcome this limitation to some extent The last fundamental problem is the shortage of time Due to the situation of COVID-19 during the study, the questionnaire and interview were carried out online to collect the data This 37 research would be more profound if it had been carried out over a longer period of time with more research instruments such as observations and keeping diaries in real English speaking classes at HUFL 5.6 Recommendations for further research Further studies may focus on different dimensions of oral communication skills with some modifications in the syllabus They might be focusing on (1) designing supplementary oral presentation activities for English teachers to use in teaching many language skills, (2) analyzing structure of oral presentations steps to maximize its benefits, (3) the ways how to enhance the effectiveness of oral presentations use in class, (4) the correlation between the use of oral presentations and students‟ cooperation level in class To fulfill all of these mentioned issues, more research instruments should be applied, such as questionnaire, interviews, observations and keeping diaries in real English speaking classes A quantitative study can also be conducted to determine students‟ success with regard to fostering oral communication skills utilizing the given syllabus Moreover, the scale of participant number should be improved to be larger to meet the validity and reliability to the research 5.7 Conclusion Since tertiary education is advanced in merit and very much connected to professional life, the necessity of learning and developing formal „oral presentation‟ skills cannot be ignored at any discipline Academic courses mainly fulfill the demands of the learners to create competent and skilled human resources This study is limited to the context in which it is conducted and the findings cannot be generalized to the whole students However, it provides a perspective as to the perceptions of students who are engaged in oral presentations in speaking courses Therefore, if the oral presentation issues are treated seriously by the academia and practiced accordingly, it will be beneficial to develop confidence among the future leaders of the world easily It can be a challenging issue initially for the non-native speakers like fresher‟s at HUFL; in other words, it can be rewarding too if proper 38 grooming sessions can be arranged from the very first semester at undergrad level Arranging seminars and workshops on „oral presentations‟ periodically for the learners can also contribute in enhancing students‟ motivation, their sense of autonomy and communicative skills Finally, it is expected that the current study can be useful for the stakeholders associated with these issues to practice in their own context 39 REFERENCES Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 15(1), 77–93 Apple, M (2011).The Big Five personality traits and foreign language speaking confidence 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small-scale social research projects Buckingham, England: Open University Press 10 Denzin, N K., & Lincoln, Y S (2005) The SAGE handbook of qualitative research Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications 11 Durer, S., Z & Sayar, E., (2013) An analysis of Turkish students’ attitudes towards English in speaking classes Voice your thoughts Procedia Social and behavioral Sciences 70 (2013) 1574-1579 12 Gay, L R., & Airasian, P (2000) Education Research Competencies for Analysis and Application Sixth Education 40 13 Ghazvini, D., S., & Khajehpour, M (2011) Attitudes and Motivation in learning English as Second Language in high school students Procedia Social and behavioral Sciences 15(2011) 1209-1213 14 Girard, T., Pinar, A M., & Trapp, P (2011) An exploratory study of class presentations and peer evaluations: Do students perceive the benefits? 15 Gömleksiz, N., M (2010) An evaluation of students’ attitudes toward English language learning in terms of several variables Procedia Social and behavioral Sciences 9(2010) 913-918 16 Karahan, F (2007) Language attitudes of Turkish students towards the English language and its and its use in Turkish context Journal of Arts and Sciences Say, May, 73-87 17 Khan, H R (2007) “Problems of oral communication in English among Bangla-deshi students.” Retrieved from http://dspace.ewubd.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/326/Harunur_Rashid_Khan.pdf, Vol 1, pp 18 King, J (2002) Preparing EFL learners for oral presentations Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies, 4, 401–418 19 McMillan, J H., & Schumacher, S (2001) Research in education: A conceptual introduction New York: Longman 20 Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 15(19), 468–475 21 Munira, (2017) Effects of Process Oriented Activities on English Production Skills of Bangladeshi EFL Learners: A Study on the Freshers of Green University of Bangladesh, Journal of Education and Social Sciences, Vol 22 Pitman Publishing (1987) Business Presentation Guide, The Learning Centre, The University of New South Wales 23 Pittenger, K K S (2004) Using real-world standards to enhance students' presentation skills Business Communication Quarterly, 67(3), 327–336 41 24 Polly Merdinger & Laurie Barton (2014) Northstar 1-Listening and Speaking 25 Robby (2010, November 27) Conquer Your Fear of Making Mistakes when Speaking English! Retrieved March 10, 2020, from http://englishharmony.com/con-quer-fear-of-making-mistakes-whenspeaking-english 26 Tom Hayton (2010) Student presentations Retrieved March 10, 2020 from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/student-presentations 27 Thornbury, S (2005) How to teach speaking Retrieved March 10, 2020 from https://ww-w.amazon.de/How-Teach-Speaking-PearsonLongman/dp/0582853591 28 Wilkinson, D., & Birmingham, P (2003) Using research instruments: A guide for researchers London: RoutledgeFalmer 29 Yang, A., Lau, L (2003) Student attitudes to the learning of English at secondary and tertiary levels System 31(2003) 107- 123 30 Živković, S (2014) The importance of oral presentations for university students 42 APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE A Personal Information Full name: Year of studying English: B What are HUFL English-majored students’ attitudes towards doing English oral presentations? Question 1: Do you usually English oral presentations in classes? Regularly Usually Sometimes Rarely Question 2: “I like doing English oral presentation in the classes.” Do you agree with this statement? Totally agree Totally disagree Question 3: “I think that English oral presentation is very important to students.” Do you agree with this statement? Totally agree Totally disagree C What issues students consider before doing the English oral presentations? Question 4: Which of the followings you spend most of time to prepare? You can choose more than answer Planning the content Designing PowerPoint Practicing presenting English (rehearsal) Practicing English pronunciation Others: 43 D What issues students experience when they English oral presentations? Question 5: How you feel when doing English oral presentation? Confident Normal Nervous Others: Question 6: Which field you think you can develop by doing the English oral presentations? Speaking English Non-verbal communication Interaction with audience Others: Question 7: What is the main difficulty of your oral presentations in English? Speaking English fluently Controlling feeling Managing PowerPoint Others: E What you expect from teachers to help you to improve English oral presentation skills? Question 8: Which of followings you expect from teachers to help you to improve English oral presentation skill? You can choose more than answer Give a familiar topic Provide source of information to plan content Check content before doing English oral presentations Impart the techniques to design PowerPoint Guide students how to speak English fluently Give tips for ways to be confident when doing presentations Support students to interact with audience Others: ………………………………………………………… Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fy7EbW_bKHWDyYTZfYB6jIxQ6pUpdSWSkJq1fJVqzc/edit 44 Questions for Interview (Students) Do you usually English oral presentations in classes? How you feel when doing English oral presentations? (WHY?) What is the main difficulty of your oral presentations in English? (WHY?) Could you please give some suggestions for teachers to help you to improve the English oral presentations skill? 45
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