Using Video Recordings to Facilitate Student Development of Oral Presentation Skills

Abstract

Lack of confidence and ineffective preparation are believed to be major obstacles experienced by Thai students required to give oral presentations in English. Self-assessment is one possible solution to help students with this problem. This study was conducted with a group of Thai university students to find out (a) whether and (b) how video recordings facilitate the students’ evaluation of their oral presentation skills and use of their evaluations to improve their performance. The research instruments were video recordings of the students’ two presentations and questionnaires that asked the students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in both presentations. The data shows that the students had positive attitudes towards video recording their presentations, especially since this helped them to notice and identify their weaknesses in non-verbal language use. Overall, the process studied was found to facilitate the students’ self-evaluation skills, resulting in the improvement of their presentation skills. Learner-centeredness has been a concern of educators since the late 1960s (Benson, 2008; Dickinson, 1987). This concept exemplifies the shift from teacher-directed learning to an autonomous learning approach that aims to promote learner independence and processoriented learning (Sinclair, 2000). Holec (1981, p. 3) defined autonomy as “the ability to take charge of one’s own learning,” and clarified that this includes “determining the objectives, defining the contents and progressions, selecting methods and techniques to be used, monitoring the procedures of acquisition...and evaluating what has been acquired.” Dam (2000) added that learners’ self-evaluation of their own linguistic competence as well as their performance and social behavior can increase active involvement in the actual teaching and learning situation. Additionally, Wenden (1999) stated that it is essential to enable learners to gain self-monitoring strategies for them to identify the cause of their own difficulties and how to deal with them. An alternative, according to Oxford (1990), is to get students into the habit of self-reflection, a metacognitive strategy that enables them to manage their learning. Despite its importance, assessing speaking activities is difficult for both teachers and students; judgment can be subjective without any concrete evidence. One way to address this problem Language Education in Asia, 2012, 3(2), 146-158. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/12/V3/I2/A03/Yamkate_Intratat Language Education in Asia, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2012 Yamkate and Intratat Page 147 is to video record the performance, allowing it to be viewed as many times as necessary to accurately evaluate the speaker’s strengths and weaknesses (Christianson, Hoskins, & Watanabe, 2009). Very few empirical studies address self-evaluation of learners’ oral presentation skills, the focus of this study, particularly in English classes in Thailand. Sintupan (1990) audiotaped and transcribed eight secondary school students’ oral presentations. The subjects corrected their transcriptions and recorded their work again. The teacher compared the two recordings. The results indicated that students corrected their own syntactic and morphological errors more effectively than lexical errors. Nevertheless, they needed teacher demonstration and guidance on how to identify the errors. To bridge this gap, Nuchanart (1992) prepared a five-point selfassessment scale focusing on content, organization, language accuracy, intonation, and pronunciation. Four undergraduate students audiotaped their presentations and evaluated their work using the scale. The students audiotaped and evaluated their work again, and then the researcher compared the forms. The process was done twice. The subjects were able to minimize their weaknesses, especially in content organization. The subjects in both studies reflected that they had difficulty in evaluating their language proficiency and needed teacher support. Moreover, audiotapes, the main instrument, had some limitations, e.g., nonverbal codes, a crucial feature of oral presentations, could not be included in students’ reflections. Oscarson (1989) noted earlier that video recordings are more beneficial than audio recordings for students in that they enable students to experience and evaluate the full spectrum of their communicative performance. Objectives A common problem in academic performance among Thai university students is their lack of both confidence and competency in oral communication and presentation skills. It is essential for teachers to help students overcome this obstacle. This study originated from a teacher’s attempt to help students in her speaking class to develop their oral presentation skills by drawing individual students’ attention to the strengths and weaknesses of their videotaped performances. The study was conducted to find out (a) if and (b) in what ways video recordings facilitate students’ evaluation of their oral presentation skills and their use of these evaluations to improve their performance. In this study, the students were given recommendations on how to analyze verbal and nonverbal aspects of their performance while observing their videotaped presentations. Viewing these recordings was expected to facilitate students’ self-development in presentation skills. Methodology Subjects The subjects were nineteen undergraduate students in an Oral Communication course in the first semester of the 2011 academic year at a university in Thailand. All students were fourthyear engineering majors. Their language proficiency is at the intermediate level. The purpose and expected benefits of using video recordings were explained to the students when obtaining their consent to participate in the study.