Investigating EFL Learners’ Perceptions towards the Difficulties in Oral Presentation at Kandahar University

Abstract

Presentation skills are considered as the most vital proficiencies required in higher education. This research paper examined the difficulties of oral presentation EFL learners encountered, strategies used to make oral presentation well and the perceived role of lecturer in improving EFL learners' oral presentation skills. With regard to achieving these objectives, questionnaires distributed to 150 EFL learners, and face-to-face interviews were conducted. The quantitative data were analyzed through SPSS by conducting frequencies and percentages, independent sample t-test and ANOVA tests. The results of the study revealed that learners had a problem with oral fluency, accuracy and pronunciation during oral presentation, feel frightened when a lot of people are watching them, afraid of being assessed by their classmates in front of the class, having low self-confidence. Furthermore, considering a crucial role of lecturer in improving oral presentation skills, this study also discovered that lecturer has to show learners videos of good speakers for enhancing their presentation skills and lecturer has to give learners freedom to choose their own topics that lower their anxiety. It is hoped that the ideas discussed will provide the learners and lecturers with basic guidelines of how to improve the learners' oral presentation and assist learners to work their way out of anxiety.

Students' Perception of Oral Presentation Assignment Using PowerPoint in English Education Students

“…Besides, Nur et al (2022) highlight that psychological factors can influence students' anxiety to perform oral presentations. Also, the students feared being asked by the audience (Tareen et al, 2023).…”

“…The study by Amelia (2022) emphasized the importance of students preparing in advance to explain the topic and field questions from the audience about what had been stated. A line study by Tareen et al (2023) wrote that students appeared confused and forgot the contents because they did not practice their presentations before class. Other perspectives also mentioned that presenters rely too much on slides because they find it challenging to choose which contents they want to put on slides from the paper they made.…”

“…Unfortunately, the advancement of oral presentations using PowerPoint is not supported by students' oral presentation competency. Tareen et al (2023) emphasize that despite the significance of oral presentations in a university, students still have a low capability of delivering decent oral presentations. Also, Pane et al (2023) mentioned that the failure of some students involved their classmates' oral presentations because they were too busy reading many sentences on the PowerPoint, which made the presentation activity less engaging.…”

“…Oral presentations pose a significant challenge for most EFL learners in EFL clases due to their lack of language ability and anxiety when presenting in front of the class. Students lack language ability and have anxiety when coming to the front of the class, especially when the lecture interrupts them in the middle of the presentation (Atmane, 2016;Tareen et al, 2023). In line with Pane (2023), students had difficulty explaining the topic; they only read the text on the slide because of blankness during the presentation, and psychological factors such as anxiety impacted their demonstration.…”

“…The previous studies only emphasized the challenges of oral presentations in EFL classrooms. At Kandahar University, Tareen et al (2023) looked into the learners' difficulties with oral presentations. The study found that students struggled with oral fluency, accuracy, and pronunciation during oral presentations, felt anxious when many people were watching them, were afraid of receiving feedback from their peers in front of the class, and had low selfconfidence.…”