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.