scholarly journals An Investigation of Anxiety Factors During English Oral Presentation Skills of Engineering Undergraduates in Pakistan

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Muhammad Arif Soomro ◽  
Insaf Ali Siming ◽  
Syed Hyder Raza Shah ◽  
Mukhtiar Ali Rajper ◽  
Sadia Naz ◽  
...  

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting oral presentation skills of undergraduate-learners of English that influence their academic performance which potentially can affect professional career. The study has used quantitative instrument as questionnaire partially adopted from McCroskey (1982) for data collection among 100 undergraduate-participants on factors affecting oral communication skills at one Public Sector University. Purposive sampling method was used since participants were selected on specific criteria of only first year engineering undergraduates. The data were analysed through SPSS, v.20 for obtaining percentage, mean, median, standard deviation, and standard error of mean to be measured. The findings revealed that oral presentation skills as the most problematic for engineering undergraduates. The results also revealed that the several factors affected engineering undergraduates’ oral presentations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Anne Ochoa Alpala ◽  
William Ricardo Ortíz García

This research paper reports on the development of oral presentation skills in a 3D virtual world called Moviestorm machinima, in contrast with real-life videos. In this way, the implementation of both types of videos sought to promote the improvement of oral communication skills, specifically oral presentations in a foreign language, as well as promoting collaborative work. The study involved 60 students from different semesters of a private Colombian university from the schools of electronic engineering, computer science, and law, focusing on English for specific purposes. The results showed how students from different faculties worked collaboratively to achieve one goal: improve their oral presentation skills.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Christensen ◽  
Jeffrey Barnes ◽  
David Rees ◽  
Gerald Calvasina

Numerous surveys of accounting professionals have established the importance of communication skills for newly-hired accounting graduates, and challenge business schools to revise curricula accordingly. To determine if the oral skills of accounting students can be improved, two oral presentation assignments were given to students in six accounting classes at a small western university. The oral presentations were evaluated on ten oral communication skills recently judged by accounting professionals to be most important for new hires to possess. Feedback was provided after the first presentation. Results showed that oral presentation skills improved significantly after the first presentation. Accounting students can improve their oral presentation skills if the accounting faculty is committed to providing timely feedback.


Author(s):  
Noor Raha Mohd Radzuan ◽  
Sarjit Kaur

To work in a global context, engineering graduates must be competent professionally as well as be proficient communicators in English, the language widely used in international business (Lee, 2003). Increasingly, engineering graduates need to learn and develop skills about existing technical areas in order to enhance their competitiveness in today’s global marketplace. The Malaysian Engineering Accreditation Council Policy (EACP, 2005) has listed effective communication skills as one of the main competencies that all Malaysian engineering graduates need to master. One of the important communication skills that engineers must develop is the ability to communicate ideas and concepts to a group of people through formal and informal oral presentations. In line with the EAC policy, Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) has taken proactive steps in integrating oral English communication skills in their curriculum and co-curriculum activities. This chapter aims to examine the correlation of engineering students’ perceived communication competence and their level of apprehension in giving a technical presentation. Questionnaires, adapted from McCroskey’s (1988) Self-Perceived Communication Competence and Richmond & McCroskey’s (1985) Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety, were distributed to 140 final year UMP engineering undergraduates who were preparing for their Undergraduate Research Report presentation. The results of the study have direct and indirect implications to the teaching and learning of oral presentation skills to engineering undergraduates.


Author(s):  
Sylvie Hertrich ◽  
Dominique Chassé

It is no wonder that communication skills areamong the twelve attributes required by the CanadianEngineering Accreditation Board, since engineers mustpossess strong oral and written communication skills. AtPolytechnique Montréal, all undergraduate students havebeen required to take a mandatory credit for this specific“soft-skill” since 2006.As an alternative to the classical one-term class, thisthree-year long innovative educational strategy is basedon a personalized approach. The first year, after takingdiagnostic tests in written and oral communication,students attend communication workshops. They thenperform realistic communication tasks in engineeringrelatedsituations, both at school and during aninternship. Each year, they complete an e-portfolio andreflect on the development of their communication skills.This method demonstrates the academic andprofessional transversality of a program-based approach.It also allows for practical assessment of complexengineering concepts reflecting the underlying philosophyof the twelve attributes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-48
Author(s):  
Thao Hieu Nguyen

This paper presents an integratedskill approach of using oral presentations as an interactive teaching tool in non-English major classrooms, specifically in the context of Tra Vinh University. This paper has the following sections: (1) introducing the context of teaching and learning English and the factors affecting students’  speaking ability in Vietnam and in several other countries; (2) presenting the benefits of integrating oral presentation in the classroom; (3) proposing suggestions that help EFL teachers to apply this approach effectively. The result shows that four main factors, which affect students’ speaking ability, are a lack of topical  knowledge, low self-esteem, limited chances of practice and the overuse of mother tongue. By giving presentation, students have a higher level of confidence, speak correctly, use more vocabularies, and develop other language skills as well as soft-skills. However, teachers need to instruct students clearly; reduce pressure on student grades and make effective feedback to individual. Besides, students need encouragement to create dynamic learning environment. It is hoped that the pedagogical ideas presented in this paper can help teachers effectively employ oral presentations as a means of improving students’ English speaking ability.


2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada Galván-Sánchez ◽  
Domingo Verano-Tacoronte ◽  
Sara M González-Betancor ◽  
Margarita Fernández-Monroy ◽  
Alicia Bolívar-Cruz

Oral presentation is one of the most important transversal competences for the professional career of Electrical Engineers. To develop and assess this competence, scoring rubrics are useful academic tools. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the learning and assessment of oral presentation skills of future Electrical Engineers by using a scoring rubric as a teaching resource. A pilot experiment was carried out in the 2011/2012 academic year in a course in the ninth semester of Electrical Engineering studies with 64 students. In order to acquire the oral competence, students had to present a marketing plan for an industrial electrical project in front of an audience. Feedback was collected in meetings held with teachers and students after the presentations. As a result, the need to review the rubric was detected, in order to make its use easier. The rubric’s design was improved. In the 2012/2013 academic year, 86 students participated in a new experiment using the improved rubric in the same subject. Intra-rater consistency was shown by the scale’s reliability, measured with Cronbach’s alpha. Regarding inter-rater consistency, two procedures were used: holistic and analytic. The holistic procedure revealed a positive and relatively high correlation between the global scores given by each of the two raters. The analytic procedure showed an acceptable level of inter-rater consensus. Through a questionnaire, quantitative data were collected reflecting students’ satisfaction with the use of the improved scoring rubric. The results reveal the rubric promotes students’ learning by providing them with a clear orientation to improve their performance on current academic assignments and in future professional situations. So, the analyses show that the proposed rubric is valid, reliable and, suitable to teach and assess oral presentations in a simulated professional scenario for Electrical Engineers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
Muhammad Arif Soomro ◽  
Insaf Ali Siming ◽  
Mansoor Ahmed Channa ◽  
Syed Hyder Raza Shah ◽  
Nadeem Naeem ◽  
...  

This paper investigates the communication apprehension (CA) and a form of anxiety which affects the engineering undergraduates’ oral communicative skills in English and particularly in oral presentations. However, this study was mainly based on the research question to be investigated: What barriers prevail among undergraduates that handicap their successful language learning and oral communicative skills in English? This study used qualitative instruments for collecting data; the instruments used were included as semi-structured interviews with eight participants and two focus group discussion to explore the barriers among Pakistani undergraduates. The data were analyzed using content analysis of the gathered data. The results revealed that communication apprehension can cause the variety of barriers among undergraduates during oral presentation. The results provided positive insights to communication practitioners and language educators on the issues related to communication apprehension; therefore, certain measures need to be taken to surmount the identified barriers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (35) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Thao Hieu Nguyen

This paper presents an integrated-skill approach of using oral presentations as an interactive teaching tool innon-English major classrooms. This paper has the following sections: (1) an introduction of the context of teaching and learning English and the factors affecting students’ speaking ability in Vietnam and in several other countries; (2) a presentation of the benefits of integrating oral presentation in the classroom; and (3) suggestions to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to apply this approach effectively. The researcher applied this approach to two groups of medical students. The result shows that four main factors, which affect students’ speaking ability are a lack of topical knowledge, low selfesteem, limited chances of practice and theoveruse of mother tongue. By giving presentations, students have a higher level of confidence, speak correctly, use more vocabulary, and develop other language skills as well as soft-skills. However, teachers need to instructstudents clearly, reduce pressure on student grades and give effective individual feedback. Furthermore, students need encouragement to create a dynamic learning environment. It is hoped that the pedagogical ideas presented in this paper can help teachers effectively employ oral presentations as a means of improving students’ English-speaking ability.


Author(s):  
Logamurthie Athiemoolam

This study provides an evaluation of a program in drama-in-education aimed at enhancing the English oral communication skills among a cohort of 63 first year intermediate phase (English second language) teachers and to establish to what extent they would be prepared to use such creative approaches in their classes as potential teachers. The data for this in-depth qualitative case study was collected through observation of their dramatic presentations, informal interviews with them based on their drama-in-education experiences and written accounts of their learning. The findings suggest that the potential of drama-in-education to enhance oral communication skills amongst English second language trainee teachers is phenomenal. A number of trainee teachers also indicated that they would definitely implement drama in education in their classes as potential teachers, since their exposure to this technique had contributed to the development of their critical and creative skills and their confidence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Benraghda Abdelmajdid ◽  
Noor Raha Mohd Radzuan

In recent years, self-assessment has been increasingly implemented as an alternative method of assessment in tertiary educational contexts. The research described in this paper employed semi-structured interviews as an instrument to evaluate engineering lecturers’ perceptions towards student self-assessment in developing their non-verbal communication skills in technical oral presentations. A sample of 10 engineering lecturers from a technical university participated in the study. Semi-structured interview data revealed that most engineering lecturers viewed student self-assessment positively and they reported on student self-assessment as providing learning values, because the latter viewed student self- assessment as a learning aid. The results further showed that student self-assessment could promote the students’ learning, an increase of students’ willingness to deliver oral presentations, and self-enabling. Therefore, student self-assessment can be a powerful method to increase learning by raising the awareness about the necessity of non-verbal communication skills in delivering technical oral presentations. Keywords: Self-assessment; perceptions; non-verbal communication skills; technical oral presentation; engineering lecturers


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