This research diagnoses the real situation of newly graduated Business Students in the National Economics University, Hanoi about their capacity in giving academic presentations, and provides some information about employers’ requirements on this skill in job interviews.
Trang 1NHÓM DỰ ÁN - MỘT CHẤT XÚC TÁC TRONG VIỆC DẠY KỸ NĂNG THUYẾT TRÌNH
Phm Th Thanh Thùy
Trường Đại học Kinh tế Quốc dân
kỹ năng quan trọng mà các nhà tuyển dụng yêu cầu
không chỉ các nhân viên ñang làm việc tại cơ quan của
họ mà còn cả những nhân viên sắp và mới ñược tuyển
dụng Tuy nhiên, không phải sinh viên nào cũng nắm
chắc ñược kỹ năng này trước khi tốt nghiệp Có thể do
họ không ñược học kỹ năng này ở trường, hoặc cũng
có thể do họ thiếu ý thức về tầm quan trọng của kỹ
năng này trong tương lai nên không học nghiêm túc
Bài viết này là kết quả của nghiên cứu về thực tế năng
lực thuyết trình của một số sinh viên tiếng Anh thương
mại tại Trường Đại học Kinh tế Quốc dân, và một số
yêu cầu của các nhà tuyển dụng về kỹ năng này trong
các cuộc phỏng vấn xin việc Từ những thông tin về
thực tế và yêu cầu ñưa ra trong bài viết, tác giả của bài
viết giới thiệu một giải pháp- sử dụng nhóm dự án- như
là một chất xúc tác ñể giúp giáo viên trên lớp tạo một
môi trường thực tế cho sinh viên sử dụng kỹ năng
thuyết trình ñể trình bày các kết quả nghiên cứu của
một nghiên cứu thực tế của họ Sinh viên sẽ có cơ hội
ñược “nhúng” vào môi trường yêu cầu sử dụng kỹ năng
này và rèn luyện ñể tạo thành thói quen sử dụng kỹ
năng thuyết trình trong công việc tương lai Bên cạnh
ñó, từ những thông về yêu cầu của nhà tuyển dụng về
kỹ năng này, nghiên cứu này cũng dấy lên nhận thức
của sinh viên về tầm quan trọng của kỹ năng này trong
công việc tương lai của họ ngay từ khi còn ngồi trên
ghế nhà trường
T khóa: nhóm dự án, kỹ năng thuyết trình; các
bên liên quan
Abstract: Presentation skills are one among many
skills many employers require from their present staff and newly employed officers However, not all students master this skill before graduating either because their universities do not provide them with this skill, or because they may not really be aware of the importance of this skill and hardly learn it This research diagnoses the real situation of newly graduated Business Students in the National Economics University, Hanoi about their capacity in giving academic presentations, and provides some information about employers’ requirements on this skill
in job interviews Besides, from all the information, the study addresses the problems by introducing project work which can be used as a catalyst in teaching presentation skills to help teachers provide their students with a practical environment to immerse into this technique presenting their own research results, and use the technique in their future job Besides, information about employers’ requirements will partly raise students’ awareness of students about learning this most-demanded skill when they are still learning at their universities
Keywords: project work; presentation skills,
stakeholders
PROJECT WORK (PW) - A CATALYST FOR TEACHING PRESENTATION SKILLS FOR SENIOR BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS
TO MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF LABOR MARKET
Introduction
If we have a look at advertisements at job
vacancies, it is obvious that in the 21st century,
nearly two-thirds of all high-growth, high-wage jobs advertised require a college degree Besides,
In 1999, Cornell University President David J
Trang 2Skorton once stated on a new school year
ceremony that a college/university education is
increasingly recognized as critical for career
success; therefore, some colleges/universities are
soon changed into a job training enterprise It is
suggested that universities/colleges should change
their education curricula by adding some subjects
which can provide their students what the labour
market wants Although changing curriculum is
not an overnight task because this task leads to
some changes in teaching methodology, teaching
time, etc Besides, in some universities or colleges,
traditions are often entrenched and rarely any
academic department wants to take risk to change
what they are using for a long time, many
universities including the National Economics
University - a university in Hanoi which is famous
for educating economics - are aware of the
importance of changing their curricula which meet
the demands of business leaders The National
Economics University in general and Faculty of
Foreign Languages have changed their curricula to
teach their students what is needed for the labour
market, not what is available in the universities
and department This paper reports the results of
an action research project on applying project
work to teaching presentation skills in English for
senior students at English for Business
Department to show the effort of teachers in this
department in changing their syllabi to teach what
the society demands With an aim to explore the
requirements of companies to their employees
about presentation skills to fill the gap(s) between
classroom and workplace, we conducted a short
survey with 14 questions (see appendix) asking
some stakeholders at some International Banks,
Non-Government Organizations, International
Enterprises and Educational Institutes, Tourist
agencies, Hotels where English Business students
may apply for jobs Besides we also interviewed
some key leaders to find out some in-depth
information or double check the questionnaire
The results of the survey are rather meaningful
Since understanding what stakeholders need, it
will be easier to see how newly graduated students
can meet these demands and how universities can fill the gap between education/training and social demands
1 Demands of some stakeholders on presentation skills in English
According to a quick survey conducting among newly graduated students from Business English Department (DBE) in the National Economics University (NEU) after 6 months from their graduation, 85% of students from DBE after their graduation are employed, the small number of students continues pursuing their further study abroad or in some domestic master courses Most
of employed students work for limited companies,
or for 100% capital foreign companies Among employed students, 40% work in sale department, 23% work at training department, others work at such department as policy development, plan development which requires them to present weekly in English Their presentations start from short talks in front of their colleagues to show their opinions, or from a formal presentation before their company’s business campaign During the presentations, presenters have to use English, which is different from normal talks in Vietnamese Giving presentation is becoming popular in many companies In most of the companies interviewed, presentations are on sales targets or sales achievements at the end of each month (25%), and other kinds of presentations have aims at introducing new policies or showing proposals (15%) Besides, most of the presentations in English are professional (72%) and dynamic, which means presenters have to use academic language and answering a lot of
follow-up questions after their presentations is obvious Another piece of important information provided
by some employers is that what drives them to success of a presentation is presentation techniques According to them, having an obviously clear content is very important; however, pace of speech is measured the most important thing to make a presentation successful Followed are tone and pronunciation Clear visual
Trang 3aids, and directness are at the same rank Question
handling, language accuracy, and styles in
presentation are measured the same role These
points show that sometimes the presentation
content is not really the decisive factor, but what
makes a presentation successful is in fact the
techniques with which the presenter employs in
their speech It is lucky that these techniques may
be taught in the university
When interviewing some employers in some
foreign companies where presentations in English
are required, we were surprised at their complaint
about the lack of speaking skills that newly
graduated employees perform At the same time,
many employers were creaming for workers who
are better trained for problem solving,
collaboration, communication, and presentation
Many employers complained that many newly
graduated employees use new technologies and
inappropriate styles in workplace communications
for their presentations, which declines the
effectiveness of their presentations At another
extreme, many newly graduated employees
applied too formal styles taught in their university
from books in their working presentations which
are not welcomed, which makes their presentation
less persuasive
As for us, colleges and universities should take
responsibility in providing students with not only
basic academic knowledge (within the scope of
this paper is basic knowledge of a good
presentation); but also a practical
environment/context for them to practice to
improve their communication, critical thinking,
information fluency, collaborative work,
quantitative literacy and especially accumulate
their presentation experience To meet this
demand, project work is a good tool in the
teacher’s hand
2 Diagnose the situation
2.1 Problems come from class-rooms
Students learning presentation skills in our
department are taught in laboratory room where
each student is equipped with a computer accessing to the internet The teacher controls the students’ computers by pressing on controlling buttons such as “broadcasting”, “template”,
“sending picture”, “sending voice” When pressing these buttons, the teacher sends his/her screen to all the students, or the teacher can observe the screen; listen to the voice of any student in his/her practicing process Sometimes, the teacher can send one or two screens of a template student to the whole class for comments after a pair or a group activity The whole class can look at their screens and give comments on other students’ product
However, the laboratory with computers is a drawback for a presentation skills class Students are separated by computers and partitions With a separated aquarium for each student, students find
it difficult to join team work or pair work assigned
by the teacher Besides, noise from computers and the standing air-conditioner distracts students from focusing on the teachers’ explanation Both teachers and students wish to come back to a traditional class-room where teachers don’t have
to waste their energy to “shout” in their lessons to students and students can easily work with their classmates in group or pair activities Furthermore, studying EAP speaking in a laboratory also causes students troubles when they want to have any idea
or when the teachers call any student to present in front of the whole class Hardly anyone at the back row or at the opposite row of the class can hear the presenter(s) clearly, let alone seeing any
of them because of the distraction of the partitions separating computers After teaching in the laboratory for more than two years, the teachers understand that teaching speaking skills in general and EAP speaking in particular in a laboratory with computers is not suitable at all
2.2 Problems come from teaching method
Being aware of the importance of presentation skills in working environment, DBE designs an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) speaking course which can provide students relevant
Trang 4theories easily applied in working environment
The program is designed in 15 weeks which
provide students basic knowledge about how to
prepare, how to start a presentation, how to
conduct a presentation and handle questions
during and/or after the presentation, and finally
how to end the presentation The book Pubic
Speaking (David Zarefsky, 2008) is used as a core
course material Besides, students are asked to
read some referent books to get useful language,
tasks and activities of presenting skills such as
Effective Presentations (Comfort, J 1995);
Presentations in English (Erica J.William, 2008);
Presenting in English (Mark Powell, 1997) and
Giving academic presentations (Susan M.Reinhart,
2005) In each class, the teachers used slides to
teach students much basic theories about specific
steps to give a good presentation
It is obvious that during the course the majority
of students understand the theory designed with
professional power point slides; however, before
each lesson, when being asked to remind what
they had learnt in the previous lessons, most of
students could hardly speak out useful language
points mentioned in the previous lessons, and applied theory into their short presentation in the classroom After four weeks, it was recognized that students did not focus on the lesson, and had a lot of private talks during the course It seemed that most of students were reluctant to participate into the lessons Although some students enthusiastically gave some comments on the video clips which were downloaded from the internet, they rarely used any signpost listed in the previous lessons The time for practicing was also short because most of students changed discussion time into small talks
From this real situation, we are aware that the situation must be improved and changed as soon
as possible
Besides the result of observation showed no improvement was recognized, a small survey asking students about what ability they CANNOT improve was also conducted Most of the important features making a good presentation, sadly, were assessed as unimproved
Chart 1: Some unimproved criteria of students’ speaking skills after 4 studying weeks
As can be seen in the diagram, most of skills
which are really essential to make a good
presentation are considered very badly improved
under the students’ eyes Persuasiveness and
professional speaking style are mainly used
among unimproved criteria
Besides conducting a survey, we kept a
teaching diary/research diary which could help us
record what we felt and everything we observed in the classroom Some interviews with some of my students in the class indicated that the language
we had been teaching in the classroom had little to
do with the language of the subject matter they were learning They felt that the slides providing skill instructions did help them a lot in building up presentation skills, but they had no idea how to
Trang 5transfer these skills to have a better and more
natural presentation Moreover, more analysis of
good and bad presentations relating to specific
skills should have been added during the course
The student feedback was consistent with our
diary entries
3 Amended planning and Action stage:
Project Work
After realizing the problem should have been
changed, we improved the situation by applying
task-based language teaching approach,
particularly project work (PW) into this subject
By definition, a task refers to “a work plan that
requires learners to process language
pragmatically in order to achieve an outcome that
can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or
appropriate propositional content has been
conveyed” (Ellis, 2003) We quickly asked
students to work in group of four and elicited a
topic which either based on group members’
interests or a problem in the society After
registering the topic and title to the teacher, since
then, each group would work consistently with the
topic The topic would be a context for students to
apply the techniques we taught in the classroom
and made a final 15-minute presentation at two
last weeks of the course We found a big change
in the atmosphere in the classroom Exciting
group discussion indeed filled the classroom
Although different opinions in building main ideas
and supporting points which would be mentioned
in the presentation occasionally caused frustration
and sorrow to some members, all these differences
seemed to be reconciled because they were
constructive and built up by mutual trust and
collaboration Most of the heated but friendly
discussion ended up with some better ideas and
students also learnt how to prioritize group
harmony for the common project goal
Besides that, project work is also a distinctive
approach to learning in that it represents a natural
extension of what is already taking place in class
Through participation in the project, students were
encouraged with a driving question that bears
real-world concerns After each theory period (45 minutes) at the beginning of each class, we asked students work with their group members and after 30- minute discussion and preparation, some groups were called randomly to give a short 5-minute presentation in front of the class In this short 5-minute presentation, students had to apply what they had learnt in theory including useful language signposts into their presentation For example, after being taught about how to design and use visual aids in presentation, students had to surf the internet to find some relevant pictures/ visual aids relating to some points in their registered topic and designed some slides which would be used in their short 5-minute presentation
It is obvious that, bridging the inside of a classroom (theory taught through slides) with the outside world (burning topics of the society they chose), project work enables students to go beyond the boundary of an EAP presentation classroom setting by which they are normally constrained
Project work also brings benefits to learner-centeredness Although we (the teacher) played a role in offering support and guidance (theory and techniques at the beginning of each class and comments during students’ slide preparation) through the project work process, students were making concerted efforts to achieve a common goal, while gaining experience in diverse opinions and viewpoints as well as negotiation and reconciliation Project work did give students a lot
of chances to develop purposeful and authentic communication in various social contexts through their chosen topics Once again, project work in this EAP presentation course created opportunities for us (the teacher) to treat our students as intellectual users of language rather than
“defective speakers” (Liddicoat, Crozet, & Lo Bianco, 2000) The teacher basing on the students’ work, took the role of a facilitator to give students some guides or comments, say adjust parallelism
in their slides, to add some more eye contacts or have more accurate gestures in their presentations
Trang 6Project work; in addition, assisted our students
with different language competence to participate
in a single project Working together for many
5-mintue presentations then finally at a 15-minute
presentation gave all students a sense of
achievement and boosted their motivation
Students were allowed to choose members of their
group The whole group after that was monitored
by a group leader who assigned tasks for each
group member If there was any weak student,
he/she had to take great effort and learn from
other members to finish the task for the success of
the whole group Furthermore, project work is
process-oriented in that it is emergent and
negotiated rather than pre-planned (Diaz-Rico,
2004) The process to prepare for short 5-minute
presentations and final a 15-minute presentation of the whole group tended to stimulate students to maximize their engagement all along the presentation and provide them with great opportunities to use the target language (signposts and useful language in the presentation) at different project work stages After some short 5-minute presentations addressing certain techniques
in each class, at the same time, it culminates in an end 15-minute presentation professionally
The success of the EAP presentation course is also confirmed through another small survey conducted at week 14 of the course Most of students answered the survey felt happier at the second half of the course
Chart 2: Improved Skills after 14-week EAP Speaking Course
As showed in chart 2, useful language, confidence
and body language are what students thought they
had improved the most (67.3%; 60%; and 52.7%
relatively) Slides preparation for presentation was
improved a lot with the result of 49.1%
The interviews with 9 students after week 13
also made the researcher happy All students
interviewed mentioned to “a sense of
achievement” at the preparation stage for 5-minute
presentations, “feelings of being rewarded” with
the teachers’ comments and they had “a fresh
experience” at the final weeks of the course
These students also agreed that they had achieved knowledge of a certain topics they had chosen for their presentation through thorough preparation stages Besides, every member in the group has his/her own language points to share with others and he/she can save time and energy to complete a project Heated discussion is also a factor that makes the EAP course become a small society filled with differences and diversity, which propels everyone to reach out for his/her greatest potential in arguing disagreeing, discussing, and finally compromising along the process towards the common end
Trang 7Conclusions
The pedagogical benefits when applying
project work in the EAP speaking course are great
This approach allows teachers to consider their
students as individuals Students took the initiative
and started conscientious preparation towards the
group goal- a persuasive 15-minute presentation
As a process and a product, the project work
approach provides students abundant opportunities
to exercise their freedom in choosing a topic they
will develop and to develop their own voices
among the group, no matter how small the scale is
More importantly, when working together in some
5-minute presentation and especially the
15-minute work project presentation, students have
first hand experience that leads to retrospection
and introspection of the learner role as well as the
teacher role Students find themselves important
in the presentation, control the class and depend
on each other in achieving the goal The teacher,
in the students’ eyes is a facilitator who they can
seek help in times of difficulty Using project
work is obviously a good teaching method which
puts catalyst for teaching presentation skills
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