5. Related studies
Oral presentations have been employed in language classrooms around the world
for many years (Siriphotchanakorn. 2005). However, few studies have examined the effects
of oral presentations. Among them, Ho (1995) taught 80 computer science students by
using oral presentations in the course, I.S. 205 Business Communication. The aim was to
help students develop speaking skills and give an effective presentation. Therefore, she
added one oral presentation to the original two requiring students to now give three oral
presentations; the first and the third 5-8 minutes individually; the second was a 20-minute
group presentation. She chose to compare the first and the third because of their similarity
(the students were allowed to choose their own topics for the first talk and the third).
The result showed that students’ performance did not improve much from the first
talk to the third talk. She gave two possible reasons: first, the third talk was at the end of the
second semester when they were preparing for their examinations and finishing work in
other courses. As a result, they might not have enough time to prepare their presentations.
Second, none of their courses required students to do oral presentations. Therefore, poor
performance could also be the result of not having had many effective oral presentations
and not having had many opportunities to do presentation. She concluded that adding the
third oral presentation to the course did not help the majority of her students (69%) to
improve their speaking skills. However, she stated that many students would apply for jobs
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in information technology fields that require strong presentation skills. Thus, they need more
oral practice and she also noted that we could change the structure of oral presentation
assignments to increase their skill building potential. She recommended that teaching oral
presentation should emphasize the use of visual aid equipment, materials, delivery
techniques, voice and speech training plus including more time to practice oral
presentations.
On the other hand, Siriphotchanakorn (2005) developed a survey to investigate
students’ opinions toward oral presentations whether it would help students to develop
speaking skills. Sixty, fourth-year English majors enrolled in the first semester of the
academic year of 2004 in the Department of Western Languages at Srinakharinwirot
University (SWU), were asked to reply to questionnaires. The results indicated that oral
presentations could help them develop their speaking skills (M = 4.38). They also agreed
that oral presentations should be included in the course offered in the English program (M =
4.15), and all students should be required to give oral presentations in the English courses
(M = 4.33). However, the students pointed out their problems during giving oral
presentations. More than half of the students had mistakes in grammar (86.67 %); spoke
English with wrong pronunciation (68.33 %); could not find the words that could help them
present their ideas clearly (60 %); and felt nervous and could not speak out (55 %). She
concluded that giving oral presentations is one of the speaking activities that can help
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students to practice not only speaking, but also presentation skills. She also recommended
in further studies that interviews or observation of the students’ behavior in English
classroom should be used to help gain deep information from participants.
According to Wichayathian (2003), she tried to develop presentation skills for low
proficiency students. She gave two activities in the presentation skills module of her
Advanced Business Oral Communication (ABOC) classes and Accountancy students at
Chulalongkorn University. Her goal was to help students develop their presentation skills
and have more self-confidence. She taught two lower level groups who were not highly
motivated. In her first activity, she used pronunciation cards. She expected to help students
correct their pronunciation mistakes by selecting some common errors. She focused only
on the word level, not the sentences or paragraphs. She found that this activity was very
useful for her students. They were more aware of stress and ending sounds of the words.
Her second activity was “Mini Group Rehearsal”. In her two classes, there were 21 and 25
students. She had only eight weeks, three hours a week. Her intention was to have them
rehearse as many times as possible. She let students rehearse five times in small groups
before presenting in front of the class. She discovered that this activity helped both
prepared and unprepared students to be ready for the final presentation, to improve their
fluency and to increase self-confidence at the same time. Most importantly, students
realized that they needed to rehearse before they stood up in front of the audience. They
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also got feedback from their audience that they could use to improve their future
presentations.
She concluded that the activities involved cooperative interaction among students in
pairs, small groups, and the whole class. The most important was that students learned to
work individually. She also summarized that both activities were suitable for lower level
students. They helped facilitate the development of students’ presentation skills and found
that the students gained self-confidence in their speaking ability in front of the class.
Similarly, Dobie (1999) designed an English course for 12 students in London by
using conversation and oral presentations in the classroom. His purpose was to develop
students’ communicative skills and build their confidence. During the first six weeks, the
activities that the teacher used were interviews, students’ diaries and field notes. During
week seven to nine, students were asked to give oral presentations. Each student
presented a topic of interest for 10 minutes. After giving presentations, the students were
expected to ask questions for the purpose of having more discussion among themselves.
The teacher also provided them feedback on errors at the end of activities. It was found that
the students had more confidence in using English, and these activities promoted them to
have more discussion among themselves.
According to Levis and Grant (2003), they believed that oral presentations could
help students develop speaking and pronunciation skills. Therefore, they included oral
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presentations as activities in their English speaking class. It was found that in giving an
effective presentation, the students needed to have careful preparation and planning.
Besides, this activity encouraged students to rehearse the presentations and encouraged
them to be increasingly interested in pronunciation errors.
In conclusion, Dobie (1999), Siriphotchanakorn (2005) and Wichayathien (2003)
concluded that oral presentations could help students improve their speaking skills, gain
self-confidence and develop their presentation skills, whereas Ho (1995) reported that most
students did not improve their speaking skills. However, oral presentations may be
appropriate for high level or advanced students to learn and develop their speaking abilities
including presentation skills and self-confidence in public speaking. Therefore, the
researcher has chosen this technique to research in order to see whether or not it helps
fourth-year English major students at Srinakharinwirot University enhance their English
speaking abilities.