Improving oral presentation skills in English for the English major freshmen at Ha Long University

Abstract

Oral presentation skill in English is one of the necessary skills for students majoring in English language. This study aims to figure out difficulties that students have encountered in English presentation skills, then propose and experiment to solve these problems. In this study, the authors conducted a survey of 124 English major freshmen at Ha Long University to find out the difficulties that students encounter when presenting in English. From the difficulties that students encountered, 24 students attending the English Presentation Skills course tested the solutions proposed by the research team to solve these difficulties. The data collected from the results of three presentations of 24 students shows the student's progress after applying these strategies. The research results show that when applying specific measures to solve difficult
problems related to linguistic factors (pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar) and non–linguistic factors (background knowledge, psychological factors, the use of technology), the majority of students have made certain progress.