HANOI, 2009
FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2009
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MA MINOR THESIS
FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60 14 10
SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI VUONG, MA

1.3.6.2. Students’ personality 15
1.3.6.3. Teacher’s role 16
CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17
2.1. Context of the study 17
2.1.1. The teachers 17

v
2.1.2. The students 17
2.1.3. Learning and teaching facilities 18
2.1.4. Speaking syllabus 18
2.2. Research Methods 19
2.2.1. Research questions 19
2.2.2. Participants 19
2.2.3. Data collection instruments 19
CHAPTER III: MAJOR FINDINGS AND DICUSSIONS 21
3.1. Results of the survey questionnaire and interviews 21
3.1.1. Students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills 21
3.1.2. Students’ evaluations of their own presentation skills 21
3.1.3. Factors affecting the students’ oral presentations 22
3.1.3.1. Students’ language proficiency 22
3.1.3.2. Students’ personality characteristics 25
3.1.3.3. Teacher factor 26
3.2 Results from Class Observation 29
3.3. Students’ suggestions 32
CHAPTER IV: RECOMMENDATIONS 34
4. 1. Recommendations for students 34
4.1.1. Having thorough preparation 34
4.1.2. Taking part in self-evaluation and peer evaluation activities 35
4.2. Recommendations for teachers 35
4.2.1. Improving students’ oral proficiency 35

important language that is used as a medium for international communication, especially in
trade and business. Therefore, the demand for studying English is great. Many students
choose to study this language as their major at university in the hope that they will be able
to find a good job after graduation because employers always seek applicants who have
excellent oral communication skills. Capability to speak English fluently in general and
presenting effectively in particular may be advantages for students in their future jobs.
Making oral presentations brings students a lot of benefits which are bridging the gap
between language study and language use, using the four language skills in a naturally
integrated way, helping students to collect, inquire, organize and construct information,
enhancing team work, and helping students become active and autonomous learners. As a
matter of fact, a language learner's ability to present in the target language is dependent on
a number of factors which are not solely related to their knowledge of the language
systems (grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation) but personality factors such as timidity
or self-confidence also play an important part. To get the best result for the presentations,
students need to master a wide range of skills and techniques such as the use of language,
the way to organize all ideas, the use of gestures, posture and eye-contact, and the ability to
speak clearly and confidently.
Being a teacher of English, the researcher realizes that many second-year English majors at
Hanoi University of Industry fail to deliver a presentation successfully and making
effective presentations is always their desire. Some serious students who invest time and
effort into an oral presentation do not always get the intended outcomes. Other students try
to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible, but do not improve their speaking skills
under such stressful situations. They have a lot of ideas for their presentations, but they do
not perform well in the class to attract the audience’s attention. These problems are the
motivation for the researcher to carry out a study on factors affecting oral presentations of
the Second-Year English major students at Hanoi University of Industry.

2. Aims of the study
speaking skills and oral presentations in English.
Chapter two is Methodology in which the current situation of teaching and learning
English in general and speaking in particular at Hanoi University of Industry is described. 3
The research methods which cover research questions, the participants, and data collection
instruments are also mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter three presents some major findings and discussions based on the results of the
questionnaire, interviews, and class observation.
Chapter four, namely recommendations, offers some suggestions for students and teachers
at Hanoi University of Industry to improve students’ oral presentation skills.
Part three, CONCLUSION, summarizes what are addressed in the study. The limitations of
the study and suggestions for further study are also included in this part.


“An analogy with the driver of a car may be helpful. What knowledge a car driver needs?
Clearly he or she needs to know the names of the controls; where they are; what they do
and how they are operated … However, the driver also needs the skill to be able to use the
controls to guide the car along a road without hitting the various objects that tend to get in
the way; you have to be able to do this at a normal speed…; you have to drive smoothly
and without getting too close to any dangerous obstacles. And it is not enough to drive in a
straight line; the driver also has to be able to manage the variations in road conditions
safely.”
He also gives another example in language: when a learner of English leaves “s” sound at
the end of English words in his flow of talk. In this situation we are not convinced that he
does not know the rule. In fact, he knows it but as he speaks, he fails to follow that rule.
Knowledge is defined by Bygate as “what they conceive and memorize”. But what make
the above student exclude “s” sound? Bygate points out that the answer to this question is a
skill, which is a special ability to do something well. This is acquired only when much
imitation and practice are offered. It seems that Bygate’s opinion of knowledge and skill is 5
true with students’ oral presentations. Many of them have knowledge of grammar,
knowledge of the topic and content but they still can not produce a good presentation.
In conclusion, “knowledge itself is not enough; knowledge has to be used in action”. That
is the reason why we need skills, which can be gained with practice. But what skills does a
learner of a foreign language need in order to obtain good oral communication? To answer
this question, it is necessary to have a look at speaking skills.
1.2. Speaking skills
1.2.1. Nature of speaking
Language skills involve four-macro skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing,
which are inter-related. According to Byrne (1986), the supportive relationship among
these skills is clearly revealed when we look at oral communication which is a two-way
process between speaker and listener (or listeners) and involves the productive skill of

state that the ability to give an uninterrupted oral presentation (monologue) is rather
different from interacting with one or more other native speakers for transactional and
interactional purposes. Therefore, presentation skills have to be learned and practiced
carefully.
To sum up, speaking is a process of transferring information and maintaining relationship
and learning to speak a foreign language is never an easy task.
1.2.2. Types of classroom Speaking Performance
Brown (1994) gives six categories of oral production that students are expected to carry out
in the classroom. They are imitative, intensive, responsive, transactional (dialogue),
interpersonal (dialogue) and extensive (monologue).
The first type of speaking performance is imitative which is carried out in the form of
drilling. Imitation of this kind is not for the purpose of meaningful interaction, but for
focusing on some particular element of language form. As stated by Brown, drilling is a
legitimate part of the communicative language classroom. “Drills offer students an
opportunity to listen and to orally repeat certain strings of language that may pose some
linguistic difficulty – either phonological or grammatical… They allow one to focus on
one element of language in a controlled activity. They can help to establish certain
psychomotor patterns … and to associate selected grammatical forms with their
appropriate context.”
The second type is intensive which goes one step beyond imitative to include any speaking
performance that is designed to practice some phonological or grammatical aspect of
language. It can form parts of some pair work activity, where learners are “going over”
certain forms of language.
The next type is responsive performance: short replies to teacher or student initiated
questions or comments. For example, the teacher’s questions: “How are you today?” is
replied “Pretty good, thanks, and you?” by the students. “These replies are usually
sufficient and do not extend into dialogues.” 7

point. A successful formula used by many speakers for an impromptu speech is the PREP 8
formula, in which P stands for the main point; R stands for the reason for the speech; E
stands for the example to illustrate the main point; P stands for restating the main point.
The manuscript speech, which is researched and structured, involves writing a
presentation word-for-word and reading the presentation to the audience. It is suited to
longer, more technical and difficult business presentations at meeting or conferences. It is
also suitable for legal presentation, a parliamentary address, a press release or a speech that
will be reported or quoted. It is used when the speaker needs to be precise in what he/ she
says. Even though the speaker is reading the manuscript, it is important to look at the
audience as often as possible to maintain eye contact and use facial expressions and
gestures.
The memorized speech is suited to short talks. It involves writing a presentation word-for-
word and reciting the presentation from memory. To sound relax and confident, the
presenter should try to memorize the introduction carefully – this applies to any speech.
The briefing speech is a short oral summary or report of a plan. Its aim might be to inform,
propose or justify solutions, or persuade the audience. An oral briefing that invites the
audience to participate is usually more effective than a long speech. For this type of
speech, it is important for the presenter to:
- prepare the briefing
- concentrate on its main purpose
- present background information
- discuss alternatives
- analyze their advantages and disadvantages
- encourage audience participation, questions and suggestions
- show interest in audience response
Team briefings are becoming more common. All members in the team take part in the
presentation. First, they consider the purpose of their presentation and the audience nature.

evidence, and emotion to sway the audience to his/ her viewpoint.
In second language classroom, the teacher will assign the students a particular type of
presentation and/ or a topic to investigate. In other times, the students may be given
freedom to choose both the topic and the type of presentation that they wish to give.
1.3.3. Presenting techniques
In fact, many students are very good at English in terms of grammar or pronunciation or
they can produce short utterances to exchange information rather well but they may fail to
give an effective oral presentation. This is due to characteristics of presentations; therefore,
students need to be prepared some necessary presenting techniques besides the language
factor for presentation. Emden & Becker (2004) indicate that “The ability to speak well
enough to interest, influence or persuade other people is a major asset, whatever you
choose to do in the future”. They place great weight on the importance of body language in
oral presentations including eye contact, facial expression, hand movement, and posture 10
because making enough interaction with the audience is very important for a good
presenter. Emden and Becker add that “most poor presenting is the result of bad habit such
as not looking at the audience or muttering instead of speaking clearly”. Body language is
used to build essential rapport between the speaker and the audience that convinces the
listeners of what he/ she is saying and encourages their response. In turn, the listeners will
reflect how they feel about the presenting skills (impressed, encouraged, or bored) and
about the message (interested, agreeing or disagreeing). It is essential, therefore, that the
presenter uses appropriate non-verbal communication at each stage while speaking and
recognizes the signals the audience is sending out.
In addition, voice quality during the presentation is also extremely important: “People’s
voices have qualities that may be attractive or unattractive: a low voice is usually easier to
listen to than a high-pitched voice, a harsh quality of voice can sound aggressive even
when its owner feels at ease, a very soft voice may be pleasant at first, but becomes
irritating if we, the listeners, have to concentrate hard to catch the words”.

- information – make sure that it is interesting and relevant to your audience
- impact – make sure to have a strong introduction and conclusions
Delivery:
- clear, simple, and fluent
- use of natural spoken language
- use of pauses for emphasis
Body language:
- use of strong, clear gestures for emphasis
- good eye contact with the audience
- positive, confident, and relaxed manner
- no distracting gestures
Visual aids:
- clear and simple messages
- efficient, professional use of equipment
The above criteria can be used to evaluate students’ oral presentations.
1.3.5. Teaching Oral Presentation skills in the language classroom
Oral presentations, if properly guided and organized, provide a learning experience and
teach life long skills that will be beneficial to learners in all school subjects as well as later
in their careers. Making oral presentations brings students a lot of advantages which are:
bridging the gap between language study and language use; using the four language skills
in a naturally integrated way; helping students to collect, inquire, organize and construct
information; enhancing team work; and helping students become active and autonomous
learners. 12
For learners of English, making a presentation in English can be difficult and demanding
because it has content, structure and needs preparation. Making a presentation is even
difficult for native speakers themselves. As stated by Brown and Yule (1983), a student
who can make good conversations in English may be unsuccessful in delivering a speech:


13
2. Put up a large calendar so that students can pick up the date they prefer.
3. After the break of every class session, have one student come forward and
speak about the topic he or she chose.
4. During the speech, sit in the audience.
5. Have each student speak for about five minutes.
6. Have the other class members hold their questions and comments until the
speaker has finished.
7. After each speech, give the speaker some feedback.
Oral presentations can also be carried out as class activity. Students work in a small group
to discuss a topic. After the discussion, each representative from each group will present
his/ her group’s ideas or each member will take turn to be responsible for each part of the
presentation.
To sum up, teaching oral presentations skills is an important task for teachers so as to help
learners develop the ability to speak to an audience which is necessary for them in the
future.
1.3.6. Factors affecting oral presentation skills
1.3.6.1. Students’ language proficiency
It is obvious that students’ language proficiency is one of the factors contributing to the
success or causing the failure of an oral presentation. Language proficiency is the ability of
an individual to speak or perform in an acquired language. Rod (1985) defines:
“Proficiency consists of the learner’s knowledge of the target language; it can be
considered synonymous with “competence”. Proficiency can be viewed as linguistic
competence or communicative competence. Second Language proficiency is usually
measured in relation to native speaker proficiency.” According to Stern (1992), proficiency
can be looked at as a goal and thus be defined in terms of objectives or standards. These
can then serve as criteria by which to assess proficiency as an empirical fact, that is, the
actual performance of given individual learners or groups of learners. He states that
“proficiency ranges from zero to native - like proficiency… Complete competence is

different levels of success. According to many researchers, feelings of anxiety,
apprehension and nervousness are commonly expressed by foreign language learners in
learning to speak a foreign language, particularly when they have to make an oral
presentation in that language.
General anxiety is defined by Spielberger (1983) as “the subjective feeling of tension,
apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous
system”. According to Horwitz and Cope (1986) foreign language anxiety belongs to
situational-specific anxiety: “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and
behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the
language learning process”. Psychologists make a distinction between three categories of 15
anxiety: trait anxiety, state anxiety, and situation-specific anxiety. Trait anxiety is
relatively stable personality characteristic while state anxiety is a transient anxiety, a
response to a particular anxiety-provoking stimulus such as an important test. The third
category, situation-specific anxiety, refers to the persistent and multi-faceted nature of
some anxieties. It is aroused by a specific type of situation or event such as public
speaking, examinations, or class participation. King (2002) considers speech anxiety is one
of the major problem that lead to learners' oral presentation failures. This anxiety comes in
part from a lack of confidence in the general linguistic knowledge, the embarrassment of
exposing the language imperfections in front of others. Besides, learners’ personality traits
such as shyness, quietness, and reticence are considered to frequently precipitate
communication apprehension. It is obvious that such feelings in the learners may prevent
them from achieving the desired goal.
1.3.6.3. Teacher’s role
King (2002) emphasizes that working with students on oral presentations is a challenging
job for teachers because it not only involves training in other disciplines such as speech
communication and public speaking, but also demands more of teachers in terms of time
and effort in lesson planning and teaching strategies. Furthermore, the importance of

and electronics. However, to meet the demand of the modern society with globalization
trend, some new majors have recently been taken into the training programme, one of
which is English. The Faculty of Foreign Languages was established in 2006, it is
responsible for teaching English to both English majors and non-English majors.
2.1.1. Teachers
In connection with the teaching staff, there are 50 teachers in the Faculty, among whom 11
teachers are regularly in charge of working in the English major Division. Their ages range
from 23 to 37, all of them graduated from the English Department - College of Foreign
Languages or Hanoi University of Foreign Languages and have been teaching for the
Division at least one year. Six people have got an M.A degree, three are doing M.A course.
One of their difficulties is that a teacher has to deal with different subjects related to
English at the same time due to the lack of teachers. However, all of them are energetic,
inquisitive and always try to apply effective methods of teaching to increase teaching and
learning quality.
2.1.2. Students
In respect of the English major students, about 80 students are enrolled each year, based on
their results of the university entrance examinations. Their levels of English proficiency
are generally various and not very high. Firstly, this can be seen from their English marks
at the entrance examinations mainly ranging from 3 to 6 (the statistics provided by the
Faculty’s assistants). Secondly, many of them still apply a passive way of learning, 17
especially the first year students. For a long time, they were familiar with doing exercises
focusing on grammar and vocabulary at High School and hardly did they practice speaking
and listening skills. Moreover, most of them come from rural areas with no favorable
chances for learning English; they are shy and not very self-confident. During their
university time, they are always encouraged to study actively and creatively to achieve
better results.
2.1.3. Teaching and learning facilities

twice during the third term. 2.2. Research Methods.
2.2.1. Research questions
The final purpose of the study is to find out factors affecting oral presentations of the
second-year English majors at Hanoi University of Industry. To achieve this aim, it is
necessary to answer the following questions:
1. What are the students’ attitudes towards oral presentations in English?
2. What are the students’ evaluations of their presentation performances?
3. What are the factors affecting their oral presentations?
4. What are the students’ suggestions to help them make better presentations?
2.2.2. Participants
This research was carried out with the participation of 82 students of three classes,
DHTA1, DHTA2 and DHTA3 (27, 27, and 28 students respectively). This is also the total
number of the second-year English majors at Hanoi University of Industry. Most of them
are female (8 students are male) at the age ranging from 18 to 20. There are 69 students
coming from rural areas and small towns, 11 are from big cities like Hanoi, Hai Phong,
Nam Dinh in which there are favorable English studying conditions. The amount of time
they have learnt English is various, ranging from 4 to 8 years. More than half of them (60
students – 73%) have spent 4 years studying English. All students have been studying three
terms at the University and during this time, few students had excellent results of the
English final – term tests. Especially, their marks of speaking in the third term were not
very high, varying from 5 to 9. 11 students (13%) got mark 5, 21 students (26%) got mark
6, 42 students (51%) got mark 7, 7 students (9%) got mark 8 and only 1 student (1%) got
mark 9 (according to the marking system of 1 – 10).
2.2.3. Data collection instruments
Instrument 1: Survey questionnaire
The survey questionnaire (see appendix 1) was delivered to 82 second-year English majors
after being given to some teachers being in charge of working with those students for their

Conclusion
This chapter has presented the methodology used in the research. The next chapter will
present the results of the study. 20
CHAPTER III: MAJOR FINDINGS AND DICUSSIONS

3.1. Results of the survey questionnaire and interview
3.1.1. Students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills
According to the survey, 100% of students agreed on the importance of oral presentation
skills. They wrote “very important” or “important” to answer the question “How important
are oral presentation skills?” To explain for their answers, they said that oral presentation
skills were very important for them to help them improve their speaking skills, develop
their reading skills for getting main ideas and organize those ideas logically; especially
they would need these skills in their future job. In the interview, all students said “Yes” to
answer the question whether they thought oral presentation skills were important. The
reasons they gave were various such as: “When I have to make an oral presentation, I have
to stand in front of a group of people and this helps me to build up my confidence, even my
courage”, “If I have to make a presentation about a topic, I have to read a lot to find out as
much information related as possible, so I can widen my knowledge of both the topic and
the language”. Being aware of the importance of oral presentation skills, students really
wanted to have as many chances to practice these skills in the class as possible since it was
their teachers and friends who would listen to their presentations and had some comments