MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ PHAM NGOC HA LINH A STUDY ON DEVELOPING PRESENTATION SKILLS TO IMPROVE THE THIRD YEAR ENGLISH STUDENT’S SPEAKING ABILITY AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MA THESIS IN EDUCATION HUE, 2012 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ PHAM NGOC HA LINH A STUDY ON DEVELOPING PRESENTATION SKILLS TO IMPROVE THE THIRD YEAR ENGLISH STUDENT’S SPEAKING ABILITY AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FIELD OF STUDY: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.10 MA THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: Assoc. TRUONG VIEN HUE, 2012 BỘ GIÁO DỤC ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ PHẠM NGỌC HÀ LINH VIỆC PHÁT TRIỂN KĨ NĂNG THUYẾT TRÌNH NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KĨ NĂNG NÓI CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ BA KHOA TIẾNG ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ CHUYÊN NGÀNH: LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.10 LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ GIÁO DỤC HỌC NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS. TRƯƠNG VIÊN HUẾ, 2012 Statement of Authorship I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere.
Author Phạm Ngọc Hà Linh Acknowledgement Above all, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Assoc. Truong Vien for the invaluable knowledge and experience, the enthusiastic and helpful guidance, the responsible care as well as the sympathetic encouragement he has given to me at every stage of the development of this research paper. Sincerely speaking, without him, the research paper cannot be completed. Also, my special thanks go to the teachers and the students at Hue College of Foreign Languages who generously and enthusiastically spent their time for my interviews and questionnaire to be conducted conveniently.
Finally, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply grateful to my beloved family, and my close friends who provided me with vital love, support and encouragement to help me overcome all the difficulties while I conducted this study. ABSTRACT This thesis studied issues related to developing Presentation skills (PSs) in order to improve the third year English student‟s speaking ability at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. In that process, it attempted to demonstrate teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions on teaching and learning PSs in English classrooms, and included the problems that English students often faced in making presentation. Besides, the study tried to give some factors that are useful for students to improve their PSs and be able to enhance their speaking skill.
The data collection tools consisted of questionnaire and interview. The data were collected and analyzed by using the reliability analysis of SPSS. Data analysis involved interpretative, qualitative and quantitative methods. The participants for this study included 18 EFL teachers at HUCFL and the data was collected mainly through questionnaire.
In addition, I delivered the interviews to 50 third-year English students who are currently studying at HUCFL in order to confirm the results collected through tape-recording and note-taking. The results from the study showed that teachers and students were aware of the importance of developing PSs to their students. In addition, showing the student‟s problem often faced in presenting will motivate teacher to find out the best teaching methods in order to help student enhance their study. Based on the findings, suggestions were given toward teachers and learners so that teaching and learning PSs can be enhanced in order to improve one of the four important skills- speaking skill.
TABLE OF CONTENTS SUB COVER PAGE STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 LIST OF TABLES .3 LIST OF CHARTS .3 LIST OF ABBREVIATION. Background of the study. Reasons for the study. Objectives of the study.
Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Structure of the study. Review of previous studies.
Communicative Language Teaching and speaking skills. The importance of developing presentation skills. The problems students often encounter in presenting. Factors that help to develop presentation skills.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Results from the questionnaires. Teacher‟s perception toward the importance of developing presentation skills. The current problems students often encounter when making presentations.
Factors that help develop presentation skills. Developing presentation skills to improve the student‟s speaking performance. Results from the interviews. The student‟s perceptions toward presentation skills.
The ways that students access to PSs. The difficulties that the students often encounter in presenting. Improving student‟s speaking skill through PSs. CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH.
Summary of the Key Findings. Implications for teachers. Implications for administrators at HUCFL. Implication for learners.
Contribution of the study. Limitations of the study. Recommendations for future research .65 2 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Summary of participant.2: Summary of the questionnaire .1: The reliability of the piloted questionnaires reliability statistics .2: The reliability of the total questionnaires reliability statistics .3: Mean scores of teacher‟s perceptions of developing PSs (cluster 1).4: Mean scores of items in cluster 1.5: The mean scores of cluster 2 .7: Mean score of factors that help to develop PSs .8: Mean score of 8 items in teaching macro organization .9: The frequencies and percentages of items 10, 11, 14, 17, 18 cluster 3) .10: the frequencies and percentage of item8, 9, 13 in cluster 3 .11: Mean score of items 3 and 5 in cluster 3 .12: Mean score of items 16 and 21 in cluster 3 .13: Mean score, the frequencies and percentage of teaching non-verbal skills .14: Mean score of using visual materials .15: Mean score of items in cluster 4 .16: The frequencies and percentage of item 26, 27, and 28 in cluster 4.49 LIST OF CHARTS 3 Chart 4.1: The percentage of using visual material in presenting .2: The percentage of item 25 .3: The frequency of item 25 .4: The percentage of item 29 in cluster 4 .5: The percentage of item 30 in cluster 4 .50 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATION CLT : Communicative Language Teaching EFL : English as a foreign language HUCFL : Hue University College of Foreign Languages PSs : Presentation skills 5 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Background of the study Image is important in today's business world.
Every time you speak you are presenting yourself and your business. It is a reflection not only on the presenter but also on the company that the speaker represents because presentation can influence the audience either positively or negatively. If you are an effective and dynamic speaker, you will cast a favorable light on virtually all your business endeavors. This means you will be more valuable and less likely to be sacrificed if your company's business climate gets tough.
If you are the leader of your organization, you have the power to create the entire image of your company and motivate your employees or your clients to act. According to Sue and Marilyn (2002, p18) “Presenting is speech of art, because it's a great script putting the effectiveness, strong emotions into the listener‟s heart.” Besides, Eliot (2004, p24) stated that: “Presenting in any profession is an art of getting the attention of the audience and enthralling them with ideas or performance. Presentations are important in every profession but are considered of prime importance in the cooperate world.” Moreover, the objectives of a speaker's presentation can range from simply transmitting information, motivating people to act, or simply telling a story. Presentation skills come in nearly as many forms as there are life situations.
In the business world, there are sales presentations, informational and motivational presentations, interviewers, lecturers, the MC Etc. Through that presentation skills are very important for all people. For example, when you want to persuade your colleagues, customers, or promote up team‟s spirit, the power of your words that make up the difference between success and failure. Therefore, PSs are useful not only for managers, leaders, business people, and celebrities but also for the students.
6 Most students of English as a foreign language at HUCFL see public speaking as an exciting and positive experience and early in the class, they need to grasp the big picture of the public speaking process with its components parts-“Presenting” is just one kind of communication context. Studying public speaking, especially “Presentation process”, involves learning skills that everybody will use at some point, such as critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, conflict resolution, team building, and media literacy. Therefore, the students can learn these important skills in presenting other subjects and enhance their speaking skills through presentation process. (Paul & Scott & Judy 2008) In most courses, graduate or undergraduate, instructors asked students to present their work (projects) during or at the end of the semester.
The presentation becomes an essential part of teaching/ learning process (Shaw 2001). Despite the importance of the students‟ presentation in the classroom, few students are known about how to learn PSs effectively. They have not been trained; they also do not know how to present reasonably as Stephen mentioned in his book (2004). Therefore, this study attempted to examine the importance of developing PSs in classroom.
It provides students and instructors with a framework for creating effective presentations. Reasons for the study The main purpose of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is to help learners develop communicative competence. Learners today not only need to master knowledge of linguistic competence but also know how to use target language to communicate successfully with the world outside. Hence, that is teachers‟ responsibility to explore activities in which learners have chance to use target language in useful and meaningful way.
Presentation is one of most useful activities that most teachers nowadays choose to carry out in their classes. However, not all teachers see the benefits that presentation skills bring to their learners. As a result, some teachers carry out presentation skills just because the requirement of the curriculum not because of benefits of this activity. Therefore, basing on results of this research will help teachers see the effectiveness of presentation skills on 7 developing their students‟ speaking ability.
Therefore, the main purpose of the research is “Developing Presentation skills to improve the third year English student‟s speaking ability at Hue University College of Foreign Language”. Moreover, it also motivates teachers to find out the best way to teach presentation skills effectively. That is the reason why I choose the topic for my graduation thesis 1. Objectives of the study My thesis focused on the following sections: - To find out the perceptions of teachers and students toward presentation skills in speaking class - To find out the problems students often encounter when they deliver a presentation - To recognize the effectiveness of presentation skills in improving the student‟s speaking performance - To suggest some useful ways of developing presentation skills to improve student‟s speaking ability 1.
What are teachers‟ and students‟ attitudes toward the importance of PSs in speaking class? 2. What problems do students often encounter when having a presentation? 3. What are factors that help to develop presentation skills? 4. What can PSs be done to improve the students‟ speaking skill? 1.
Significance of the study Being able to present concisely and precisely is a key of success in studying. Therefore, this research was done to determine the effectiveness of developing presentation toward the third year English students on improving students‟ speaking ability. This research also suggests some useful ways in developing successful presentation techniques. From that, teachers will be conscious of the effectiveness of presenting in teaching and learning process.
8 Moreover, students will have chance to work with the strength of other subjects when making a presentation which increases communication skills. Hence this research is helpful to provide knowledge on ways to develop natural ways in speaking activities. Scope of the study This research focused on developing presentation skills of the third year English major students to improve their speaking ability.