An Insight to Attitudes and Challenges in Oral Presentations Among University Students

Definition of oral presentation

The Learning Centre of The University of New South Wales (2010) defines oral presentation as a short talk on an assigned topic delivered to a group of people. In an oral presentation, one or more students will present their views and positions on a topic based on their readings or research. According to the University of Wollongong (n.d.) oral presentations can be observed in social events, classrooms and workplaces. In addition, an oral presentation at university shows a student's ability to communicate relevant information effectively in an interesting and engaging manner.

Students attitude towards oral presentations

There have been many past studies written on students’ attitude towards oral presentations. One study by Dansieh et al. (2021) was done to investigate the possible causes of anxiety towards oral presentations among tertiary students from Technical University, Ghana. The exploratory case study on 46 students used surveys and interviews as the instruments. The study found that even though students are aware of the importance of oral presentations, 63% of the respondents experienced anxiety when asked to give oral presentations. Additionally, 23.9 % experienced nervousness while another 13% experienced stage fright when asked to give oral presentations. The study further revealed that the respondents associated their unfavourable experience to three causes: 1) fear of making mistakes (65.2%), 2) fear towards the audience (21.7%), and 3) lack of knowledge in oral presentations (13%).

Another recent study that measures students’ attitude towards oral presentations was conducted by Pham et al. (2022) on 600 second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Van Lang University in Vietnam. The quantitative study used a survey questionnaire with 38 questions. The study reported that 89.7% of the respondents agree that oral presentation skills are important for their career prospects, and 90.7% of the respondents believe that being able to give good oral presentations is an advantage to students. Additionally, the respondents of the study also acknowledged that oral presentations can help improve communication skills, build confidence, and increase creativity. Despite showing positive understanding towards the importance of oral presentations, 57.1% of the students dread the idea of standing and speaking in front of an audience.

The next study that shed light on students’ attitude towards oral presentation is by Marinho et al. (2017). The cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study was conducted on 1135 undergraduate students using two instruments: a questionnaire and the Self-statements During Public Speaking Scale (SSPS). The study reported that 89.3% of the respondents believe that oral presentation courses should be included in the curriculum. This implies that there was high awareness among students towards the importance of oral presentations. Additionally, the study also reported that 63.9% of the respondents expressed fear towards oral presentations and it is also highlighted that the female gender is prevalent in the percentage. Marinho et al. (2017) also claims that students with lesser experience in conducting oral presentations and students with negative self-perception tend to have more fear towards oral presentations.

There is also a qualitative study that was conducted on this subject. Grieve et al. (2021) studied 46 undergraduate students from University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. Participants of the study expressed that they were aware of the importance of having oral presentation skills. The study also identified six themes: fear of being judged; physical symptoms; uncertainty about the topic; negative effect on university experience; practice and preparation; more practical support needed. These themes show that overall, students have fear towards oral presentations. Grieve et al. (2021) subsequently reported that the fear towards oral presentation that students have negatively impacted their learning and student experience, and also affected their mental wellbeing. The study concluded that there is a need to provide support to higher education students with public speaking fear.

Finally, a quantitative study conducted by Dellah et al. (2020) on 199 UiTM Melaka students investigated students’ anxiety level and the correlation between gender, program, language proficiency and oral presentation anxiety. The study used the adapted Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale or FLCAS as questionnaire. The finding indicated that students experience moderate anxiety towards oral presentation. Dellah et al. (2020) elaborated that this could be because students were worried of other’s negative evaluation which hinders their readiness to present, and subsequently affect their learning performance in general. This study also concluded that while gender and program are not determining factors, language proficiency does impact students’ anxiety level.

Hence, it is clear that even though students depict their awareness on the importance of oral presentations, they have a negative attitude towards them. The next section of literature review will further elaborate on the challenges and difficulties that students have when dealing with oral presentations.

Challenges students faced during oral presentations

There has been much research done to understand the challenges and difficulties that students face when they are asked to give oral presentations. Imron and Hantari (2019) studied 23 students in Indonesia. The qualitative research aimed to examine the possible challenges that students face that result in their high anxiety when dealing with oral presentations and public speaking. The study concluded that there are four challenges that students face: 1) self-value (their confidence level), 2) discomposure (fear of failures, embarrassment, and making mistakes), 3) lack of preparation time, and 4) unfamiliarity with the topics. Imron and Hantari (2019) suggested that the academic institution should provide a supportive environment for students to learn about oral presentations.

Another study that investigated the challenges that students face when dealing with oral presentations was done by Soomro et al. (2019). The quantitative study was conducted on 100 engineering undergraduate students in Pakistan. The study used a questionnaire as the instrument and reported that there are seven factors that contribute as challenges to students The factors are stress and nervousness (71%), lack of motivation (63%), poor oral communication skills (55%), fear and anxiety (52%), shyness (51%) and low self-confidence (51%). The study suggested that in order to curb this problem, there is a need for institutions to provide training to students and also offer them ample opportunities to practice oral presentations (Soomro et al., 2019).

Pham et al. (2022) reported a similar finding. The study depicted that three most prevalent challenges that students face regarding oral presentations are fear of making mistakes (53.8%), shyness (57.1%), and the lack of topical knowledge (64.1%). Pham et al. (2022) also elaborated that students are usually more confident and perform better when they present in their native language as compared to when they present in English. They argue that this happens because students mostly think using their native language and encounter difficulty translating it to English when presenting.

Hamad and Seyyedi (2020) conducted a more comprehensive study on the challenges that students face during oral presentations in Soran University, Iraq. Their quantitative study on 121 undergraduate students revealed that linguistic factors (language proficiency) were the primary cause for English speaking difficulties with 36.42%, followed by affective (fear of making mistakes and being evaluated, anxiety, low self-confidence and shyness) and sociocultural factors (environment and opportunities) with 35.63% and 27.95 % respectively. The study also concluded that the challenges are the result of a combination of interrelated and intersected psychological, linguistic and sociocultural factors.

One recent study by Bui et al. (2022) was conducted on 90 undergraduate students from Tay Do University, Vietnam. The study used questionnaires and interviews as instruments. The study revealed that 88.3% of the students acknowledged the importance of oral presentations and felt that they had been given ample opportunities to present. The study also depicted that the common difficulties faced by students stem from linguistic (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar), background knowledge and psychological factors (anxiety, self-confidence, lack of motivation, fear of making mistakes). The interviews of teachers and students corroborated this finding.

Students’ demographic profile

In total, 145 respondents answered the survey and 75% of them were female students, while the remaining 25% were male students. Most of these students (63.4%) were students from social sciences and humanities programs. This is followed by students from the applied sciences (20%) and the students from the business programs (16.6%). The majority of the students were first year students (65.3%) followed by second- and third-year students with 27.1% and 7.6% respectively. Among these 145 students, 31.7% of them obtained grade A for their English paper in the SPM examination. 32.4% obtained grade B, 20% obtained grade C. 10.3% obtained grade D, while the remaining 5.5% obtained grade E for the examination. Hence, it can be said that the respondents constitute of mostly intermediate and higher intermediate students in the aspect of language proficiency.

R1: Students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course

This section presents data to answer research question 1: What are students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course?

When evaluating the findings of students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills, it is found that their attitude can be categorised to the perceived importance of oral presentation skills on i) future use, ii) improvement of their language and communication skills, and iii) general learning purposes.

Table 2 illustrates how students perceive the importance of oral presentation skills for their future use. The most significant importance that students perceive is that presentation skills play a vital role for their future careers with the mean of 4.3. This is followed by the perceived importance of presentation skills on their confidence with studies and work with the mean score of 4.1. In terms of connecting them with success, the mean score achieved is 4.0 and the least mean score is 3.0 for the statement “Presentation skills are just one of the skills, so we do not need to be excellent or focus too much on the skill”.

Table 3 depicts the perceived importance of presentation skills on improvement of language and communication skills. It is revealed that most respondents feel that oral presentation skills help improve their communication skills with a mean of 4.3. This is followed by improving their language proficiency with 4.1. Respondents also feel that oral presentation skills help master their thought and improve their speaking ability with a mean score of 4.0.

Table 4 shows the results for students’ perceived importance of presentation skills for general learning purposes. Items AOPS2 and AOPS9 shows the highest score. Respondents feel that having the ability to give good presentations is necessary for students and that they give better presentations when it is for their favourite subject. For item AOPS7, 3.9 mean score is recorded, while a lower mean score of 3.4 is obtained for item AOPS10.

Table 5 illustrates students’ attitudes towards an oral presentation course. Oral presentation courses aim at providing students guidance to deal with external and internal factors that hinder effective presentation. For the external factors, it is found that respondents feel that the course helped them understand about body language when presenting the most with a mean score of 4.1. This is followed by a mean score of 4.0 for giving them knowledge on presentation skills. The same mean score of 3.9 is obtained for items AOPC1 and AOPC2. As for the internal factors that hinder effective presentations, the highest mean of 4.0 is obtained for item AOPC8. This is followed by a mean score of 3.9 for item AOPC3. Additionally, the respondents stated that the course helped them feel more confident about presenting (mean score= 3.7) and taught them how to deal with anxiety when presenting (mean score= 3.5).

R2: Challenges that students encounter when performing oral presentations

This section presents data to answer research question 2: What are the difficulties that students encounter when performing oral presentations? In the context of the current study, it is found that difficulties when performing oral presentations can be divided into four categories; general, linguistic, background knowledge and psychological challenges.

Table 6 presents the general challenges that students face during oral presentations. For general challenges, the highest mean is obtained for the statement “You have faced difficulties when making a presentation.” The next item with a mean of 3.7 is that students’ main difficulty is the lack of time for preparation and practice. Items DOP14 and DOP 16 both obtained the mean of 3.6. The lowest mean is for item DOP8 which states that students perceive their conversation skill as poor.

Table 7 shows the eight items on linguistics difficulties that students face during oral presentations. The highest mean (4.0) is obtained for item DOP3, followed by DOP 5 with a mean score of 3.8. Next, for item DOP9 and DOP2 that are items on vocabulary, the mean scores obtained are 3.7 and 3.6 respectively. The least mean is obtained for item DOP6 with 2.9 mean score, followed by item DOP4 with 3.0 mean score

Table 8 depicts students’ attitude towards challenges pertaining to background knowledge. Respondents of this study feel that background knowledge plays a significant role in oral presentation skills as mean score of 3.9 is achieved for this item. This is followed by a mean score of 3.8 for the statement “You meet difficulty voicing your opinion on unfamiliar topic”. Finally, a mean score of 3.6 is obtained for item DOP12.

Table 9 shows the mean score for psychological challenges that students face during oral presentations. The highest mean is obtained for DOP17 where respondents feel afraid of making mistakes. Items DOP16 and DOP18 have the same mean score of 3.9. For item DOP19, “You have high motivation for presentations in classrooms”, the lowest mean score of 3.1 is obtained, while the second lowest mean score is obtained by item DOP20 which is 3.2.

Students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course

This study focuses on students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and courses as well as the challenges that they face during oral presentations. The findings of this study can augment the existing literature, especially regarding students’ attitude on oral presentation course. From the findings of this study, it can be gauged that overall, students understand the vital roles that oral presentations play for their future career. They also view presentation skills as something that they have to master, in order to succeed in their study life, and to obtain better career opportunities. The findings of this study can corroborate previous studies by Dansieh et al. (2021) and Pham et al. (2022) that both depict students’ awareness on the importance of having good presentation skills.

Next, this study also found that students view oral presentations as a tool that can help them improve their communicative abilities, language proficiency, and help them in their studies in general. This finding is parallel to Pham et al. (2022) who also found that students believe that oral presentation skills can enhance their communicative ability, and Amelia (2022) who found that oral presentations can help students improve their language proficiency and aid in developing academic skills. Hence, it can be concluded that students are generally aware of the importance of presentation skills on their study, career prospects, and life in general.

The next finding of this study is that students view the oral presentation course they take, ELC590 as being able to help them externally and internally when it comes to oral presentation. Students feel that the subject gives them knowledge about oral presentations, and also teaches them about content and body language. Additionally, the subject also helps students deal with anxiety and build their confidence when presenting. The study of Pham et al. (2022) had similar results where students feel that oral presentation course helped them with knowledge and confidence level when presenting. Similar to this study, it was also established that taking an oral presentation course made students better presenters for other subjects.

The challenges that students face during oral presentations

Firstly, this study found that most students have faced challenges during oral presentations and having lack of time for preparation is also one of the biggest challenges they faced. This finding is similar to Bui et al. (2022) where most students responded “Agree” and “Strongly Agree” to the similar statement. Therefore, it is established that even though many are aware on the importance of oral presentation skills, students still do not know how to overcome challenges revolving around it.

Next, this study also found that even though not many students regard their conversational skill as poor, linguistic factor is still a major challenge that they face during oral presentations. This is similar to the findings by Hamad and Seyyedi (2020). To elaborate, this study found that most students feel that searching for the right word to use is a challenge they faced, and they also encountered difficulties with limited vocabulary. They also faced challenges when it comes to pronunciation and grammar, with pronunciation being the least worried element. This finding is contrary to Bui et al. (2022) who found that pronunciation is the biggest linguistic challenge, followed by vocabulary and grammar. This could be due to geographical factor as both studies were conducted in different countries. From this finding, it can be gauged that as second language learners, students’ language proficiency will always be a challenge, and to overcome this, students should be exposed to role plays or other speaking activities that require them to speak in English spontaneously.

For psychological factors, this study found that the biggest challenge that students have is fear of making mistakes. This is followed by anxiety when speaking in front of others, and fear of criticism and evaluation by others. The result is consistent with the study by Pham et al. (2022) who found that fear of making mistakes is the biggest psychological challenge that students faced. A study by Soomro et al. (2019) too stated anxiety as the major challenge but it was ranked first as compared to the findings of this study. Finally, the finding of this study can also corroborate to the finding by Imron and Hantari (2019) who found fear of making mistakes and anxiety as challenges that most students face during oral presentations. Based on this finding, it can be seen that even when students are taught anxiety and methods to overcome it in the oral presentation course, these psychological factors still exist and hinders students from creating effective presentations.

Pedagogical implications

Students attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation courses, as well as the challenges they face when asked to conduct oral presentations are explored in this study. According to this study, students are generally aware on the importance of presentation skills on their study, career prospects, and life in general. However, many students still face difficulties when dealing with presentations. The challenges that they face can be divided into general, background knowledge, linguistic and psychological factors. Out of these four challenges, psychological factors recorded the highest mean collectively. Since the finding also found that students value oral presentation courses, it is suggested that educators incorporate strategies to overcome psychological factors in their courses. Students should be taught to increase the level of preparation they have, embrace anxiety, and use the nervous energy they have to create better presentations.

In addition, educators should also provide a friendly atmosphere that allows students to voice their opinion. Also, since fear of making mistakes is listed as one of the traits that students have, sharing sessions could be incorporated in lessons to allow students to practice speaking without the pressure of being evaluated or judged. Finally, a participatory approach in teaching and learning can be inculcated in lessons to reduce students’ communication apprehension.

Suggestions for future research

Since this study revolves only around 145 students of Universiti Teknologi Mara,Shah Alam, a greater sample size and a broader context could produce a more accurate result. Next, since it has been established that students are generally aware about the importance of oral presentations, studies on the factors that make students dread presentations could be done. In addition, it is also crucial to conduct experimental studies that investigate the effectiveness of oral presentation courses to delve on the ways these courses can further help students with oral presentation skills.