Investigating post-secondary students’ perceptions of the use of online videos for improving their English presentation skills

Paul C H Lip
Caritas Institute for Further & Adult Education
Hong Kong SAR, China

Stanley H P Leung
Caritas Francis Hsu College
Hong Kong SAR, China

Many teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) are now making use of online videos (e.g. YouTube) for students to refer to as samples of how people use English for specific purposes (Jones 2007). However, there seem to be only a few studies, especially in Hong Kong, on their use for helping post-secondary students to improve their presentation skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether online videos help to enhance presentation skills in a class of 34 Chinese EFL students in a Hong Kong post-secondary institution.

Students were given self-assessment forms to assess how frequently (1=never to 5=always) they used different criteria for presentations skills based on their group presentations for an English course in the first semester. In the second semester, the same class had an opportunity to watch online videos on presentation skills from ‘The Oral Presentation Skills’ site at http://caes.hku.hk/tops/ in another English course. After two weeks, the students delivered their group presentations and completed self-assessment forms on the same issue as in the first semester after watching the online videos based on their group presentations in the second semester.

A comparison of the pre-and post-online video self-assessment results showed that the students used the following criteria more frequently for giving presentations after watching the online videos on presentation skills:

• analysing the values, needs and constraints of their audience;
• incorporating both a preview and review of the main ideas;
• developing an introduction to catch the attention of their audience and provide necessary background information;
• using a conclusion which refers back to the introduction and, if appropriate, contains a call-to-action statement;
• using anxiety to fuel the enthusiasm in their presentation;
• ensuring the benefits suggested to their audience are clear and compelling;
• communicating ideas with enthusiasm;
• rehearsing so that there is a minimum focus on notes and maximum attention paid to their audience;
• preparing the use of only key words to avoid reading from a manuscript or technical paper;
• using visual aids and body gestures;
• preparing answers to anticipated questions, and practising responses to them;
• arranging seating and checking audio-visual equipment in advance of the presentation; and
• using gestures which are natural and not constrained by anxiety.

Follow-up structured interviews with nine students showed that they had benefited from the online videos as they improved their presentation skills in, for example, organizing the content, displaying information on PowerPoint slides, passing over to the next speaker and using various appropriate gestures.