Difficulties Encountering English Majors in Giving Academic Oral Presentations during Class at Al-Aqsa University

Abstract

This study aimed to identify the main difficulties encountering English majors at Al Aqsa University of Gaza while giving academic oral presentations. To achieve the aim of the study, the researcher applied two tools, a questionnaire and an interview card. Through the interview card, the researcher elicited difficulties from forty seven English majors throughout using main criteria of academic oral presentations. More difficulties were deduced from 154 students under three domains through the questionnaire. The sample of the study consisted of one hundred and fifty four junior and senior English major students forming (40%) of the population of the study. These subjects were randomly selected to participate in the study. According to the questionnaire, the following results were reached: More than 58% of the students were in consensus that " Speakers don’t act cheerfully and smile when speaking", " Presenter is unable to use tools such LCD and power point effectively", " Speakers don't keep eye-contact with audience", "Speakers don’t stick to the objectives of the speech " and " Speakers don’t use appropriate transitional words and clear signals " were serious difficulties encountering English majors in giving academic oral presentation. In light of the interview card, these findings were found: " purpose statement of the presentation isn’t explicit", " there isn’t a good choice of the topic", " objectives aren’t clear", " there isn’t a good connection of ideas", "there aren’t well structured and clear conclusions" and "the presenter doesn’t use suitable gestures to keep audience's attention" were major difficulties encountering students in giving academic oral presentations through the main criteria of academic oral presentation of the interview card. Moreover, results showed, according to the two tools, that there were no statistically significant differences at (µ ≤ 0.05) due to classification. But there were statistically significant differences in favor of females due to gender through interview card. In conclusion, the researcher recommended carrying out further researches on the difficulties encountering Al Aqsa University junior and senior students in giving academic oral presentations and concentrating firstly on organization of the academic presentation in light of effective main criteria to produce a good presentation.