Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Improving presentation skills for grade 10th students

Nội dung tóm tắt: Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm Improving presentation skills for grade 10th students

1. Question 2: What do you think about the activities of presentation training procedure? a. Useless b. Not very useful c. Quite useful d. Very useful but challenging Choice Question a b c d What do you think about the activities 0% 2% 18 % 80 % of presentation training procedure? Question 3: What are the benefits that you can get from the presentation training procedure? a. Now, I no longer feel nervous when speaking in front of the class b. Thanks to the presentations, I can review and widen my knowledge of the topics I have learnt in textbooks. c. Now, I know how to produce effective PowerPoint slides for presentation. d. During the preparation for presentations, I can learn new words in contexts. e. Presentation practice helps me to improve my English speaking. f. From now on, I feel more comfortable when being asked to present about something. g. All above benefits h. Others: . Choice Question a b c d e f g h What are the benefits that you can get from the 11% 4 % 4% 5% 7% 4% 65% 0% presentation training procedure? It can be seen from the table that 65% of students can get the all the benefits from the teacher’s activity. Presentation training really helps students in many different ways. 29
2. Question 4: Do you think that you have made progress in presentation skills thanks to the activities introduced by the teacher? a. No b. Yes, a little c. Yes, a lot Choice Question a b c Do you think that you have made progress in presentation skills thanks to the activities 1% 10% 89 % introduced by the teacher? Question 5: What is your opinion about activities of presentation training? (If you do not want, you don’t have to answer this question.) . Here are some of the students’ comments on the presentation training procedure: It is clearly seen from the survey that the students in class 10A1 and 10D1 have got many benefits from the teacher’s activities to improve their presentation skills. The most obvious one is the changing in their attitude toward presentation. They feel less stressed when talking in class and they know how to use many techniques to better their skills. This is a good start for them to keep on practising to get excellent performance in the future. 30
3. PART 5. CONCLUSION 5.1. Summary In the author’s high school, most students in selected classes (10A1, 10D1) are quite good at English and they can speak English quite well. However, they do not know how to produce good presentations. They show a lot of shyness and lack of presentation skills. Although public speaking skills are very significant for students in their studying and their futures jobs, they are not paid much attention at high school. As a matter of fact, there are not any separate subjects on which the English majors’ presenting skills are trained so it is the teachers of English who teach them oral presentations skills. Being well aware of this real situation, the author teacher has found her ways to train her students and help them better their presentation skills. By using expert training videos, model videos, slides making training, providing topics for frequent practicing and creating extra curriculum activities like video making and presentation contest, the teacher has made positive changes in students’ attitude toward presenting and improved the quality of their oral presentations. It is apparently seen from the real situation that the students are really interested in the supplementary activities that the teacher gives them to practice presentation skills. Learning to present well is difficult but teacher can make it easier and funnier if she tries to give the students interesting activities that make them more motivated to learn. It cannot be denied that the training activities really encourage students to practice public speaking and really helps them to be better at their English presentations. These activities are also really useful in involving all the students in practicing presentation skills frequently. Many students put a lot of effort in trying to produce as many interesting presentations as possible. Some of the students also say that they are really keen on doing more research on the given topics to have deeper understanding about them. The results from the tables of marks confirm that most of the students in class 10A1 and 10D1 have a great progress during the school year. At the beginning of the school year, the students have poor presentation skills and they are usually afraid of dealing with presenting topics. Many students feel extremely nervous when standing in front of the class. They make bad PowerPoint slides and don’t know how to utilize body language, eyes contacts and ways to catch audience attention. However, at the end of the second term, at least they can overcome the fear of public speaking and produce good presenting slides. Most importantly, the training procedure gives students a good opportunity to practice their speaking skill. It also increases the students’ confidence in using English. In fact, many students show great advance in presentation skills and surprise their teacher with many good presentations. It is also suggested that the use of presentation training procedure recommended in this study should be applied for every grade at high school, from 31
4. grade 10 to grade 12. If this kind of extra activity is used for a long term, it will be a great way to enhance students’ public speaking. The training should start as soon as possible to make a good start for students in the journey to conquer presentation skills. 5.2. Some Pedagogical Recommendations on training presentation skills Presentation skills are essential for students’ study and future jobs. The above discussion may lead us to make a number of recommendations and suggestions in relation to the purposes of the research. When training presentation skills, the following should be taken into consideration. 1. Teachers should make students aware of the importance of presentation skills and always find ways to encourage them to involve in practicing. Positive feedback should be given regularly. 2. Groups presentation should be used at the first stages to help the weaker students feel less stressed and the group members can help each other in many ways. 3. At some time of the training procedure, marks should be given to the students’ presentations so that they have to be serious with their training and practice. They will try their best to get good points. The presentation contest is a good suggestion to boost students’ public speaking skills. 4. Presentations skills can only be improved by careful training and practice on regular basis. “Practice makes perfect” is always true in achieving excellent oral presentations. 32
5. REFERENCES Brown, P. (2005). “Students Presentations”. Modern English Teachers. Bygate, M. (1987). Public Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bygate, M. (1991). Speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Byrne, D. (1986). Techniques for Classroom Interaction. London: Longman. Clark, D. Big Dog’s Leadership Page- Presentation Skills. Retrieved from the www on 20 March 2009 at http:// www.nwlink.com ~donclark/leader/leadpres.html. Comfort, J. (1995). Effective Presentation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donn Byrne. (1986). Teaching Oral English. London: Longman Dwyer, J. (2000). The Business Communication Handbook. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Ellis and O’ Driscoll. (1992). Giving Presentations. Hong Kong: Longman Emden, J & Becker, L. (2004). Presentation Skills for Students. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 33
6. APPENDIX I SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS Các câu hỏi dưới đây là để làm dữ liệu cho bản nghiên cứu về: “Improving presentation skills for grade 10th students” “Cải thiện kĩ năng thuyết trình cho học sinh lớp 10” Rất mong các em bớt chút thời gian trả lời một cách trung thực và chính xác các câu hỏi. Mọi thông tin của các em cung cấp đều được bảo mật. Xin chân thành cảm ơn sự cộng tác của các em! Question 1: What do you think about your presentation skills at the beginning of the school year? a. good b. quite good c. not very good Question 2: What do you think about the activities of presentation training procedure? a. Useless b. Not very useful c. Quite useful d. Very useful but challenging Question 3: What are the benefits that you can get from the presentation training procedure? a. Now, I no longer feel nervous when speaking in front of the class b. Thanks to the presentations, I can review and widen my knowledge of the topics I have learnt in textbooks. c. Now, I know how to produce effective PowerPoint slides for presentation. d. During the preparation for presentations, I can learn new words in contexts. e. Presentation practice helps me to improve my English speaking. f. From now on, I feel more comfortable when being asked to present about something. g. All above benefits h. Others: . Question 4: Do you think that you have made progress in presentation skills thanks to the activities introduced by the teacher? a. No b. Yes, a little c. Yes, a lot Question 5: What is your opinion about activities of presentation training? (If you do not want, you don’t have to answer this question.) 34
7. APPENDIX II FOLDERS IN THE USB ENCLOSED WITH THE STUDY All FOLDERS IN THE USB EXPERT VIDEOS MODEL VIDEOS 35
8. SOME EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ PRESENTATION VIDEOS SOME EXAMPLES OF STUDENTS’ POWERPOINTS 37
9. SOME EXAMPLES OF THE PRESENTATIONS IN THE PRESENTATION CONTEST SOME EXAMPLES OF GROUP PRESENTATIONS 38
10. SOME EXAMPLES OF THE PRESENTATIONS IN CHECK-UP TIME SOME EXAMPLES OF GOOD PRESENTATIONS FROM STUDENTS 39