English

Making Effective Oral Presentations in English in an Academic Context

1. Introduction

Oral presentations are brief discussions of a focused topic delivered to a group of listeners. In academic context, oral presentations are used to impart knowledge or to stimulate discussion.   The importance of English language nowadays can not be denied as the language have become a lingua franca or communication language among nations in the world. English is rank as number two language after the Chinese language (which includes all the dialects) in terms of number of people using it for communication purposes. Therefore in academic contexts, it is necessary to equip the students with good competency in the English language before they graduate so that when they leave, the students have no problem in communicating in English.

As a result, the role of English language instructors have become the front line in the battle to produce better students with good command of English language. During interaction with students, the most used modes of communication is through oral presentations. As the front line, the English language instructors have to be the best example they can be. In order to produce the best result, all English language instructors have no other choice but to find a way for making effective oral presentations in English.

This presentation shall explore on the issues related to make effective oral presentation in English in an Academic Context. As a summary, oral communication need us to know how to pronounce words and sentence properly as well as the interactive element, namely, the transactional model of communication which is the management of turn-taking. For that reason, the need for speech training in English is vital for all English language instructors.

2. Speaking in a formal academic context

  Speaking in a formal academic context involve understanding of the following issues:
    1. The transactional model of communication
    2....