Introduction
Oral presentation competence comprises knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are required in order to speak in public, where the goals may include informing, or persuading the audience, or self-expressing (De Grez, 2009). Such competence has not only become the basis of essential skills across disciplines within the academic fields, including Humanities and Social Sciences, but has also turned into a must-have skill for all university graduates (Heron, 2019; Waluyo, 2019b).
Communication, especially in the oral mode, has been included as one of the essential 21st century skills. Different types of courses provided in higher education commonly integrate oral presentations either as part of the course activities or as part of the course learning objectives (Cooper, 2005). However, the ability to do oral presentations in front of a public audience is a complex task (Morreale, 1993) because psychological (e.g., fear, shyness, motivation, etc.) and contextual factors (e.g., the background of the audience, the topic of the presentation, etc.) may significantly affect presentation performance and delivery. A recent mixed-methods study from Tsang (2020), for instance, showed a significant correlation between students’ perceived competence regarding the delivery of oral presentations and their level of anxiety with respect to public speaking. With this in mind, public oral presentations can become an even more complex task when one is required to deliver it in a foreign language, such as English.
The importance of acquiring oral presentation skills is normally noticeable in the practice of teaching and learning in the classroom, in which students are regularly assigned to present their ideas, arguments, opinions, and research results either in a group or individually across academic courses over time. All these activities aim at enhancing students’ oral presentation skills, which will be advantageous when they graduate and start working as professionals. Nonetheless, students’ oral presentation skills are still of concern; complaints about graduates’ poor presentation skills are still not scarce and it has been identified that graduates tend to rate their oral communication skills highly, which is different from the standards of good oral communication perceived by industry (Jackson, 2014). Due to the disparity of communication standards, previous studies have called upon education practitioners to better prepare undergraduates in oral presentations and articulate industry expectations in the area of communication skills more clearly (DuPre & Williams, 2011). In the present day, university students and graduates are normally required to have the ability to perform a presentation in English to a public audience (DuPre & Williams, 2011; Heron, 2019; Jackson, 2014).
The present study intends to contribute to the development of research within English oral presentation skills among Thai EFL learners at the university level with a focus on the interplay among English proficiency, self-confidence, and teacher feedback. By exploring General English (GE) courses for Sciences and Technology and Humanities and Social Sciences, which aim at the development of oral skills, the researchers examine the roles of self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency in developing students’ English oral presentation competence. This study also examines if students’ gender and academic major affect the development of students’ presentation skills in English. Existing research has indicated that these three variables separately play influential roles in students’ oral presentation(e.g., Fisher & Frey, 2018; He, 2018; van Ginkel et al., 2017). However, no research has examined the three variables in a single study. As developing students’ oral presentation skills, especially in English, has been important in higher education, understanding factors that matter in the development process is equally as crucial as teaching the skill.
Literature Review
Self-confidence
Self-confidence is "an individual’s recognition of his own abilities, loving himself, and being aware of his own emotions" (Şar et al., 2010, p. 1205). It lies in ones’ belief and trust in themselves and their capabilities in performing certain tasks or actions (Iland, 2013). To some extent, Brown (1998) considered self-confidence similar to self-esteem and simply thought that they referred to, "the way people evaluate or appraise their abilities and personality characteristics" (p. 192). Further, despite the limited number of studies, there have been some differences with regard to the types of self-confidence across contexts. Şar et al. (2010), for instance, asserted that, in the Turkish context, self-confidence can be divided into two types, involving inner confidence and outer confidence. Inner confidence refers to the ideas and feelings that reflect how much individuals are delighted and satisfied with themselves. Outer confidenceemphasizes one’s ability in controlling their feelings. Similarly, Gürler (2015) used the terms intrinsic self-confidencefor the thoughts and emotions that one possesses as a result of being pleased with themselves and extrinsic confidencefor the behavior and attitude that one holds towards others in the effort of communicating and controlling their emotions. Meanwhile, in an earlier study, Park and Lee (2005) investigated the interrelationships among L2 learners’anxiety, self-confidence, and oral performance in the Korean context. They identified four underlying factors encompassing situational confidence, communication confidence, language potential confidence, and language ability confidence. These differences implied that the factors underlying self-confidence might be context-bound, and the present study intends to examine the underlying factors of students’ self-confidence in the Thai context.
Self-confidence has always been connected not only to oral presentation tasks but also to almost all the tasks that students are assigned to perform with favorable outcomes. In English oral presentations, self-confidence has a significant role as it lessens students’ anxiety and fear to speak in the target language (He, 2018). It can give students a sense of achievement and consequently enhance their endeavor for better accomplishments. In an empirical study with Indonesian students, Salim (2015) examined the correlation between self-confidence and achievement in English oral presentation, which disclosed a strong, positive correlation (r=.82, p=.01). Bolívar-Cruz and Verano-Tacoronte (2018) investigated the effect of gender on students’ oral presentation competence (N=201) at a Spanish university. Their findings revealed that male students’ performances were influenced by the existence of incentives, while females’performances relied primarily on self-confidence. In contrast, Warren (2020) did not find sex and age to be influential in students’ self-reported confidence scores in relation to their oral presentation skills. When self-confidence was linked to self-assessment of oral presentation skill, a strong association with gender was discovered, with male students’ assessments being less accurate than female students’ (González-Betancor et al., 2019). These different findings on the role of gender in students’ oral presentation competence imply that self-confidence might not be the only factor significantly influencing male and female students’ presentation competence. Additionally, given the previous studies conducted in different countries, there might a context-related factor causing the differences. The present study, hence, intends to continue the exploration of the role of gender in the context of Thai EFL students, which is still insufficiently researched, with the addition of two variables, i.e., teacher feedback, and English proficiency.
Teacher feedback
Teacher feedback is one of the essential elements that guide the teaching and learning process, further leading either to development or deterioration of students’ abilities to perform tasks. In an oral presentation, it is a response to students’competence and performance provided by the teacher, allowing the comparison between the actual and desired outcomes (Olesova, 2014). In other words, it is post-response information that helps students improve their future performance (Rensing et al., 2014). Since the objective is for improvement, teacher feedback should be positive and constructive, yet honest and accurate (Rudney & Guillaume, 2003). Teachers should have an awareness of motivational value and positivity within their feedback as it may cause long-term impacts on students’ performance. Without any feedback, students may have different interpretations of their oral presentation performance and repeat the same mistakes in their future presentations. Nicol and Macfarlane (2006) asserted that positive and constructive feedback plays different roles in different situations, such as clarifying what constitutes bad and good presentations, guiding students’ self-assessment on their presentation skills, and enhancing positive and courageous beliefs within themselves. Therefore, teacher feedback should be immediate, motivational, constructive, positive, relevant to the students’ needs, specific, and in different forms or expressions (Haughney et al., 2020). Effective and beneficial feedback is constant, consistent, and focused on particular tasks done by the students (Wilson, 2012).
Previous empirical studies have obtained a wide range of results regarding the impact of teacher feedback on students’oral presentation competence and performance. According to van Ginkel et al. (2017), who investigated teacher, peer, and self-feedback, they discovered the superiority of teacher feedback for enhancing students’ presentation behavior; nonetheless, in a comparative study, Murillo-Zamorano and Montanero (2018) showed that teacher feedback could only improve students’ presentation performance by 5%, while peer feedback improved it by 10%. The finding of a case study from Wang et al. (2017) on teacher feedback to student oral presentations in EFL classrooms indicated, "teacher commentary on oral presentations does not only provide a tool for consolidating students’ linguistic knowledge, but also, perhaps more importantly, aids the development of communicative competence and discourse strategies" (p.3). Recently, Al Jahromi (2020), who researched whether teacher- and peer-formative feedback could enhance students’oral presentation skills, disclosed that teacher feedback helped improve students’ performances in the final presentations and was more favorable by students. Experienced EFL teachers reported that error correction was not the primary objective of their overall feedback, yet rather the students’ acquisition of communicative and presentation competence (Wang et al., 2018). In brief, there have been studies exploring the impact of teacher feedback on students’oral presentation, but how teacher feedback, self-confidence, and English proficiency affect students’ English oral presentation competence is still insufficiently researched. Thus, the present study expects to deepen the understanding of the effect of teacher feedback when examined together with self-confidence and English proficiency towards students’ oral presentation performance.
English proficiency
The term ‘proficiency’ in this context refers to the state of being fluent in English (Meriam-Webster, 2021).To understand the definition of English proficiency, Harsch (2014) advised looking at the multilayered componential nature of English proficiency, encompassing horizontal and vertical dimensions. The horizontal dimension is thedivision of English proficiency into sub-skills, involving the four main English skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking while the vertical dimension categorizes English proficiency into test-reporting purposes. In other words, English proficiency is reported in different levels either as a whole or in specific skills. English proficiency is commonly applied to those whose first language is not English measured by various means, including standardized tests such as IELTS, TOEFL, and TOEIC (Ortmeier-Hooper & Ruecker, 2016). Villarruel (2009) elaborated that proficiency in the second language consists of oral and academic language. Oral proficiency refers to "(the) development of conversational vocabulary, grammar, and listening comprehension. Meanwhile, academic proficiency refers to various skills, including word reading, spelling, reading, fluency, reading comprehension, and writing" (p.273). English proficiency is undeniably the primary goal of learning a foreign language and an indicator of one’s language ability. Thus, the body of the literature has provided a large number of empirical studies examining a wide range of variables that can potentially influence EFL learners’ proficiency. Nevertheless, there is a limited number of studies directly investigating the effect of English proficiency in learners’ oral presentation performance and competence.
Of the limited number of studies, a few findings have been highlighted. Oral presentations have been used as an activity to develop EFL learners’ proficiency (Brooks & Wilson, 2014). Fisher and Frey (2018) researched teachers who developed and implemented interventions using oral presentations with urban school students in the U.S. According to their findings, formative trials concentrating on the use of language frames, needs-based grammar training, purposeful instruction on public speaking (including outlining and writing speeches), self-recording, and feedback helped students improve their English proficiency. Students with different levels of English proficiency evaluate their peers’ oral presentations differently in Japan, indicating the effect of proficiency of students’ views on their presentation performances (Mika, 2006). As for the teaching materials, providing opportunities for students to watch videos of model presentations may positively affect their presentation performance (Okada et al., 2017; Okada et al., 2018). The results of a cross-sectional interdisciplinary comparative study by Amirian and Tavakoli (2016) proposed for more practical oral presentation courses that directly helped increase students’ oral proficiency skills. In the present study, English proficiency is utilized through its interrelationships with self-confidence and teacher feedback and its potential predictive role on students’ oral presentation performance, which has not been explored much by preceding research in this area.
The Study
Of the three variables of interests (i.e., English proficiency, self-confidence, and teacher feedback), the results of the literature review show that most of the previous empirical studies examining students’ oral presentation skills have investigated the role of teacher feedback, while the roles of self-confidence and English proficiency are still insufficiently researched. In addition, there is also an indication that academic majors may contribute in the development of students’ presentation competence (Aryadoust, 2016). Furthermore, empirical studies within this area of research are still rare to be found in the context of Thai EFL learners. Therefore, this study aims to provide empirical evidence on the interplay among self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency as well as the roles of these three variables on developing students’ English oral presentation competence. The exploration includes two presentation courses, i.e., English Presentation in Sciences and Technology and English Presentation in Social Sciences and Humanities, at the undergraduate level at Walailak University, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand. The course design involves several stages of preparations coupled with teacher feedback, continuously scaffolding students’ English presentation competence to the final presentation. The research questions are presented below.
- What factors underlie Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence and perceived teacher feedback practice in English presentation courses?
- Are there any significant differences across gender, proficiency level, and field of study?
- What are the interrelationships between Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence, perceived teacher feedback, English proficiency, and oral presentation scores?
- What effects do self-confidence, perceived instructor feedback, and English competency have on Thai EFL students’ English presentation performances?
Method
Research design
The design of this study was quantative with the focus on classroom practices. In this type of research design, teachers’ critical observation and inquiry during their involvement, as well as teachers’ fast attempts to accomplish a desired change in the learning outcomes, are crucial to the research design (McKernan, 1996). Task-based language teaching was chosen as the teaching approach to prepare the students for their presentation task (choose the topic, read the literature, write the presentation script, and do the oral presentation). The implementation lasted for one term (12 weeks) in English Presentation in Sciences and Technology and English Presentation in Social Sciences and Humanities Courses at Walailak University, Thailand in the Academic Year of 2019-2020. Figure 1 (below, p. 7) illustrates the implementation of the research design.
Participants
The participants were undergraduate sophomore students who took English Presentation courses at Walailak University, Thailand in the 2nd semester of the Academic Year 2019/20. The total population was 1439 students, consisting of 875 from the field of Sciences and Technology and 564 from Humanities and Social Science. The participants were students who did their final presentation in week 11 or 12. The survey was distributed by the respective teacher in the class. Students were free to fill the questionnaire or not. After data collection, the sampling group was 419 participants, consisting of 297 Sciences and Technology and 122 Humanities and Social Science students who completed the online questionnaire along with consent forms. However, after data cleaning, such as removing incomplete and doubled responses, only 390 students were retained for further analysis, with the following details: Students in the field of Sciences and Technology (N=274; female=196, and male=78) came from eight schools from Walailak University, Thailand encompassing School of Allied Health Sciences, School of Architecture and Design, School of Engineering and Technology, School of Informatics, School of Pharmacy, School of Public Health, School of Science, and Walailak University International College of Dentistry. Their average age was 19 years old, with the youngest being 18 years old and the oldest being 24 years old. Within the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) levels, the participants had proficiency levels at A1 (14.6% / 40), A2 (65% / 178), B1 (20.1% / 55), and B2 (0.4% / 1). Students in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences (N =116; female=93, and male=23) originated from three schools encompassing the School of Liberal Arts, School of Management, and School of Political Science and Law of Walailak University. Their average age was 19 years old, with the youngest being 18 years old and the oldest being 23 years old. The participants had proficiency levels at A1 (19% / 22), A2 (62.9% / 73), and B1 (18.1% / 21).
Course design
The English presentation course was conducted in one academic semester (12 weeks) that involved model presentation videos, presentation preparation, presentation practice, and teacher feedback. The stages of the presentation preparation encompassed outlining and drafting the introduction, body, and conclusion parts. Students practiced presenting each part and received feedback from the teacher. The final presentation occurred in weeks 11 and 12 where students presented the whole part in one presentation. Students’ presentation performances were assessed by using a speaking rubric developed by teachers at the university that involved the criteria such as originality, structure, language usage (grammar and syntax), vocabulary, pronunciation and enunciation, and delivery. The rubric was then analyzed and approved by the university academic board to be used. The details can be seen in the Appendix.
In week 1, the activities covered the course introduction, the announcement of the final presentation project, and the list of suggested topics. The students chose their presentation topics, related to Science and Technology or Humanities and Social Science. Then, the students focused on outlining and writing the introduction part of their presentations and studying the grammar point from weeks 2 to 4. They did some practice and recorded videos for the introduction part, which were uploaded in the class Facebook group. Afterward, the students presented the introduction part in class, and the teacher gave feedback. From weeks 5 to 7, the students developed the outline and wrote the body part of their presentations, aside from learning the grammar points. The students did some presentation practice and recorded videos for the introduction and body parts, which were uploaded in the class Facebook group. Then, the students presented the body part in class, and the teacher gave feedback. From weeks 8 to 10, the students developed the conclusion part of their presentations. They also learned how to visualize their presentations. After that, the students did some practice and recorded videos for the introduction, body, and conclusion parts, which were uploaded in the class Facebook group. Then, the students presented the conclusion part in class, and the teacher gave feedback. In weeks 11-12, students performed their final presentations with visual aids.
Data and Instrument
There were two types of data collected in this study. The first type consisted of students’ presentation scores in theintroduction, body, conclusion, and final performance. Using a standardized speaking rubric, the score ranged from 1 to 24. The criteria included in the rubric were applicable to assess students’ presentation skills as they involved the assessments of delivery, pronunciation, vocabulary, structure, and originality (see Appendix). Then, upon the completion of the course, the following instruments were used to collect the data of self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency.
Survey questionnaires
To measure self-confidence, the Self-Confidence Questionnaire by Park and Lee (2005) was utilized. In this study, prior to the questionnaire used for data collection, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was employed to find which items were suitable for the Thai English learner context. Based on the EFA results, some revisions to the questionnaire items were done to suit the participants’ context. Four scales were used to collect the data related to self-confidence which emphasize situational confidence, communication confidence, language potential confidence, and language ability confidence. The detailed items can be seen in Table 1.
Moreover, the Teacher feedback questionnaire by Vattøy and Smith (2019) was employed. This research made minor modifications to the items to ensure that they were suitable for the participants’ context, as this inventory was initially designed to assess school-aged children’s perceptions of teacher feedback, e.g., changing the word teacher to lecturer and the word school to university. There were six items to collect the data from the students on the role of teacher feedback. The detailed items can be seen in Table 2 (see below, p. 8).
All the surveys used in this study adopted a 5-point Likert scale, in which "0" means "Strongly disagree" and "4" means "Strongly agree".
English Proficiency Test
Students’ English proficiency tests were measured using Walailak University Test of English Proficiency (WUTEP) before students began their second academic year. WUTEP measures learners’ English proficiency levels both as a whole and in particular abilities such as listening, reading, writing, and speaking. It is framed by the CEFR and by Classical Test Theory (CTT). Furthermore, the findings are generated as scores in the A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2 levels (Waluyo, 2019a). The WUTEP test scores have been drawn upon other international standardized tests, including TOEFL, IELTS, and TOIEC. Every year, around 2000 university students and members of the public are assessed using this competency exam. In this study, prior to the distribution of the survey questionnaire, learners’ competency tests were conducted. In the data analysis, this study used both students’ CEFR proficiency levels and raw scores.
Data Analysis
The data analysis was performed with the three types of data:
- Combined data (N=390) from students in the fields of Sciences and Technology and Humanities and Social Science
- Data from Sciences and Technology students (N=274)
- Data from Humanities and Social Science students (N=116)
The reason for examining these three types of data was to obtain more detailed results on differences across academic majors. After data cleaning and preparation, the collected data were examined using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, bivariate correlation, multiple-linear regression, and mediation analysis. For descriptive statistics, the mean was interpreted using three scales: 3.5 – 5 (High level), 2.5 – 3.4 (Moderate level), and 1 - 2.4 (Low level).
Figure 1. Illustration of the research procedure conducted in one term (12 weeks)
Students prepared and performed oral presentations in English that included three parts: introduction, body, conclusion, and overall presentation. After performing each part of the presentations, students received feedback from the teacher. The learning process and presentation performance occurred from week 2 to week 10. In weeks 11 and 12, Students performed their overall presentations. Afterwards, researchers distributed the questionnaires about students’ perception of self-confidence and teacher feedback and collected the students’ presentation scores and proficiency levels.
Results
RQ 1: Factors underlying Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence and perceived teacher feedback in English presentation courses.
The first research question explored factors that underlie Thai EFL learner’s self-confidence and teacher feedback in English presentation tasks. First, the normality of the data was checked and confirmed with the skewness and kurtosis between -2 and +2 for all items (George & Mallery, 2003). Afterward, to examine the latent variables underlying the questionnaire items, multiple exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were performed (Henson & Roberts, 2006). The analysis followed the guidelines from Phakiti (2018), who explained the steps of running EFA using SPSS in applied linguistics research. There were four criteria employed: 1) the extraction method was Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) because of its robustness (Fabrigar & Wegener, 2012); 2) factors to be reserved were the ones with Eigenvalue higher than 1; 3) the threshold for sampling adequacy was .50, identified using KMO and Bartlett’s test (Field, 2018); and 4) it was assumed that some factors might be unrelated, so orthogonal rotation (i.e., Varimax) was utilized; .30 was selected as the minimum point for acceptable factor loadings (Fabrigar & Wegener, 2012). After the underlying factors were revealed, new labels were given, as explained in the following paragraph.
The results of EFA for Thai EFL learner’s self-confidence in English presentation task unveiled two factors that accounted for 55.312% of the total variance, validated by Bartlett’s test of sphericity: χ2 (55)=2343.585 p<.001. The sampling adequacy was .912, higher than the threshold of .30. After that, each factor was named. The first factor (Factor 1 or F1) comprised of 8 items with factor loadings above .30; these items were initially within Situational Confidence (items 1, 2, 3), Language Potential Confidence (items 7, 8, 9), and Language Ability Confidence (items 10, 11). Considering the nature of these items, this factor was labeled Situational and Potential Confidence(Eigenvalue=5.840). The second factor (Factor 2 or F2) consisted of 3 items with item loadings exceeding .30 and was labeled Communication Confidence (Eigenvalue=1.010). The decision was motivated by the fact that the items in this factor were initially concerned with Communication Confidence (items 4, 5, 6). Table 1 displays the loadings for statements within the two underlying factors along with the reliability coefficients estimated by using Cronbach’s alpha.
Table 1: Item loadings and reliabilities for Factor 1 (F1) and Factor 2 (F2)
After running the factor analysis and the reliability for the self-confidence variable, researchers ran another factor analysis on teacher feedback. The results revealed one stable factor of teacher feedback (Eigenvalue=4.731), which accounted for 74.631% of the total variance, validated by Bartlett’s test of sphericity: χ2 (15)=2094.579, p<.001. The sampling adequacy was .927, higher than the threshold of .30, as seen in Table 2.
Table 2: Item loadings and reliabilities for Teacher Feedback
RQ 2: Differences across gender, proficiency level, and field of study
The analysis was continued to delve into the profiles of Thai EFL learners’ gender, English proficiency, and field of study in relation to the underlying factors of self-confidence and perceived teacher feedback practice in English presentation courses. The analyses were conducted following the results of the factor analysis in the previous question. First, the results indicated that across gender, there were no significant differences observed on Factor 1, i.e.,Situational and Potential Confidence (t (2,388)=.795, p =.427) and Factor 2. i.e., Communication Confidence (t(2,388)=.523, p =.602) of learner’s confidence and teacher feedback (t (2,388)=-1.641, p =.102). Similarly, across the study fields between Sciences and Technology and Humanities and Social Sciences, there were no significant differences noted in Factor 1 (t (2,388)=.207, p = .836), Factor 2 (t (2,388)=.222, p =.825) of learner’s confidence and teacher feedback (t (2,388)=-2.496, p =.013). Further, the one-way ANOVA results indicated non-significant differences across learners with different proficiency levels with regards to Factor1 (F (2,386)=.233, p=.792), Factor 2 (F (2,386)=.805, p=.448) and teacher feedback (F (2,386)=1.743, p=.176) and the Tukey post-hoc test also did not reflect significant results between A1, A2, and B1. The detailed items can be seen in Tables 3 and 4.
Table 3: The results of One-way ANOVA
Table 4: The results of Post Hoc Tukey HSD
RQ 3: the interrelationships etween Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence, perceived teacher feedback, English proficiency, and presentation scores
The next research question examined the interrelationships among Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence, perceived teacher feedback, English proficiency, and presentation scores. First, the analysis was carried out on the data collected from the students in the fields of Sciences and Technology and Humanities and Social Science (N=390). Learner’s confidence was positively correlated with perceived teacher feedback (r=.166, p<0.01). English proficiency was positively correlated with students’ speaking presentations: introduction (r=.380, p<0.01), body (r=.279, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.488, p<0.01), and final (r=.366, p<0.01). Teacher feedback was noted to have significant correlations with Factor 1, i.e., Situational and Potential Confidence (r=.173, p<0.01) and Factor 2, Communication Confidence (r=.134, p<0.01). Then, significant correlations between Factor 1 and 2 were noticed (r=.672, p<0.01). Regarding students’ presentations, every part was observed to have significant correlations: introduction was significantly correlated with body (r=.536, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.647, p<0.01) and final presentations (r=.492, p<0.01); body had positive correlations with conclusion (r=.654, p<0.01) and final presentations (r (390)=.513, p<0.01). Lastly, conclusion was closely associated with students’ final presentation (r (390)=.557, p<0.01). In contrast, there were no significant correlations between learner’s self-confidence and teacher feedback with all the presentation parts. English proficiency levels were also not related to Factors 1 and 2. Factor 1 was reported to be significantly correlated with all the presentation parts, except for the Final presentation. However, F2 did not have any significant relationship with all the presentation tasks, as can be seen in Table 5.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
- Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 5: The results of Pearson correlations for combined students (N=390)
Furthermore, within Sciences and Technology, the correlation analysis indicated that learners’ self-confidence was significantly related to their introduction presentation (r =.166, p<0.01), yet not to body, conclusion and final presentations. The students’ overall self-confidence was positively correlated with Factor 1 (r=.900, p<0.01) and Factor 2 (r=.936, p<0.01). The students’ English proficiency was closely associated with all the presentation parts: introduction (r=.340, p<0.01), body (r=.304, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.475, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.369, p<0.01), but had no correlation with Factor 1 and 2. Surprisingly, teacher feedback was shown to have no correlation with the students’ presentation scores in all parts. Conversely, it was no surprise to see that all the presentation parts were significantly related. Introduction was significantly related with body (r=.564, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.693, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.537, p<0.01); body had a positive correlation with conclusion (r=.678, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.470, p<0.01); lastly, conclusion was related to final presentations (r=.577, p<0.01). Further, Factor 1 was also significantly related to all the presentation parts, that is it was correlated significantly with introduction (r=.209, p<0.01), body (r=.175, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.168, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.142, p<0.01), but had no correlation with Factor 2. However, Factors 1 and 2 were significantly correlated (r=.689, p<0.01),as can be seen in Table 6.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
- Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 6: The results of Pearson correlations for Science students (N=274)
In contrast, for Humanities and Social Science students, self-confidence was noted to have significant correlations with English proficiency level (r=-.375, p<0.01), teacher feedback (r=.485, p<0.01), Factor 1 (r=.878, p<0.01), and Factor 2 (r=.930, p<0.01); yet, it was not correlated significantly with all the presentation parts. It was English proficiency which had positive correlations with all the presentation parts with the following indices: introduction (r=.488, p<0.01), body (r=.227, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.525, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.377, p<0.01). F1 (r=-.241, p<0.01) and F2 (r=-.417, p<0.01) were negatively correlated with English proficiency. Only teacher feedback was not correlated significantly with English proficiency (r=-.002, p > .05). Teacher feedback was correlated only with Factor 1 (r=.509, p<0.01) and 2 (r=.387, p<0.01). Similar to the results in Sciences and Technology students, all parts of students’presentations were found to have significant relationships to each other: introduction was significantly correlated with body (r=.461, p<0.01), conclusion (r=.523, p<0.01), and final presentations (r=.477, p<0.01); body had positive correlations with conclusion (r=.594, p<0.01) and final presentations (r=.672, p<0.01); lastly, conclusion was closely related to final presentation (r=.603, p<0.01). Only Factor 2 was closely correlated with introduction presentation (r=-.184, p<0.01), while non-significantly correlated with other presentation parts. Factors 1 and 2 were closely related (r=.641, p<0.01), as presented in Table 7.
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
- Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Table 7: The results of Pearson correlations for Humanities students (N=116)
RQ 4: Predictive roles of Thai EFL learners’ self-confidence, perceived teacher feedback, and English proficiency on their English presentation performance
The last research question analyzed the predictive roles of learner’s self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency in presentation outcomes. Multiple-linear regression analyses were conducted. The results revealed that English proficiency (F (1,389)=.000 p <.05) with R2=.134 was the only significant predictor for students’ final presentation in the combined data. Moreover, English proficiency was also a significant predictor among Humanities and Social Science students (F (1,115)=18.836 p <.05) with R2=.377 and Sciences and Technology students (F (1,273)=42.809 p <.05) with R2=.136. More precisely, English proficiency predicted nearly 38% of the variance in Humanities and Social Science students’ final presentation, higher than that in Sciences and Technology students with only 14%. Teacher feedback (F (1,389)=.339 p= .561) with R2=.001 and learners’ confidence (F (1,389)=.673 p =.413) with R2=.002 could not predict learner’s final presentation across the field of study. Additionally, even in a small number, F1 (F (1,273)=5.58 p <.05) with R2=.020 could significantly predict 2% of Sciences and Technology students’final presentation, but not F2 (F (1,273)=.071 p= .790) with R2=.000. Nevertheless, for Humanities and Social Science students, F1 (F (1,115)=.056 p= .814) with R2=.000 and F2 (F (1,115)=.165 p= .685) with R2=.038 could not predict anything in students’ final presentations, as presented in Table 8.
Table 8: Linear Regression analysis results on the outcome of students’ final presentation
Moreover, this study also ran mediation analysis to explore if there was any mediation role that learner’s confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency might play in students’ final presentation performance. The result revealed that English proficiency could not mediate between students’ self-confidence and students’ final presentations (t(2,387)=1.274 p= .203) and teacher feedback and students’ final presentations (t (2,387)=-296 p= .767) in the combined data. Potential mediators were not noticed among either Sciences and Technology and Humanities nor Social Science students.
Discussion
This study examined the interplay among self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency in developing students’ English oral presentation competence. The first finding outlined the underlying factors of Thai EFL learners’self-confidence and teacher feedback. The two factors included Situational and Potential Confidence (i.e., Factor 1) and Communication Confidence for self-confidence (i.e., Factor 2). This finding indicates that the learners’ self-confidence in English presentation may be bound to situational contexts and inner belief on communicative competence, which is also suggested by Park and Lee (2005). In the reported survey results, for instance, the students believed that they could get an A in the English presentation class, but they hardly believed that they were good English speakers. The situational and potential contexts, in this instance, were visible when the students had a higher level of confidence in their English presentation class yet refused to confidently admit that they had a better level in English speaking. In a nutshell, the students might be confident in performing one particular type of oral presentations in English and lack confidence when conducting other types of communication in the English language, e.g., daily conversation, public speaking, etc. Since the survey was distributed after the class was finished, there was a possibility that the students’higher level of confidence in the presentation class was influenced by their learning experience throughout the course.
On the other hand, teacher feedback seems to be unidimensional, which only has one factor within it, i.e., teacher feedback itself (Vattøy & Smith, (2019). It applies to all learners, regardless of their gender, fields of study, and English proficiency levels involved in this study. The learners moderately agreed that the teacher feedback given after each of their individual presentations improved their understanding and performances in English presentations. Additionally, in this study, the learners were taught by foreign lecturers who did not speak the learners’ L1, meaning that the feedback was fully delivered in the English language. It was possible that the learners did not comprehensively grasp the teacher feedback. Though it has been suggested that being able to present in English, which can be affected by various factors (Morreale, 1993; Waluyo, 2020), is a complex skill, the results of the factor analysis indicated that the teacher feedback instrument was a single construct.
Secondly, the interrelationships among self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency varied across the three types of data. In the data collected from the students in the fields of Sciences and Technology, and Humanities and Social Science (N=390), self-confidence was only correlated with teacher feedback, while English proficiency was not related significantly to either variable. Then, non-significant correlations were observed among these three variables in Sciences and Technology students. In contrast, the three variables had both positive (self-confidence and teacher feedback) and negative (self-confidence and English proficiency) relationships in Humanities and Social Science students. These non- and significant correlation results among Sciences and Technology, and Humanities and Social Science students seem to be affected by the students’ individual characteristics and learning environments. Sciences and technology students commonly spend most of their time in laboratories, while Humanities and Social Science students tend to interact with people during their study, which might have influenced their levels of confidence whenever they receive feedback from their teachers. Self-confidence can lessen anxiety and fear of speaking the target language (He, 2018), which eventually enhances students’ endeavors for attaining better accomplishments. This second finding suggests that self-confidence has some interaction effects with teacher feedback. As pointed out by Nicol and Macfarlane (2006), positive and constructive feedback plays different roles in individual students. In addition, self-confidence did not correlate with English proficiency level. This implies that although presentation has been recommended as one activity to increase proficiency (Brooks & Wilson, 2014), it may not have a direct relationship with students’ self-confidence. Another insight from this second finding is that, unlike English proficiency, self-confidence and teacher feedback are consistently unrelated to all parts of students’ presentations.
The last finding pointed out that English proficiency was the only significant predictor for students’ final English oral presentation, while self-confidence and teacher feedback were not. This finding was consistent in all students in both the Sciences and Technology, and Humanities and Social Science fields. Previous related studies have only examined how oral presentation could enhance proficiency (e.g., Fisher & Frey, 2018; Okada et al., 2017, 2018). Hence, this finding sheds light on the direct effect of English proficiency on students’ English presentation performance. Nevertheless, this finding does not support studies suggesting predictive roles of self-confidence and teacher feedback on students’ oral presentation performance (Salim, 2015; van Ginkel et al., 2017). In a comparative study between teacher and peer feedback, Murillo-Zamorano and Montanero (2018) found that teacher feedback could only improve students’ performance by 5%, half of peer feedback’s contribution. Moreover, the present study also performed mediation analyses to find whether English proficiency could be the mediator for self-confidence and teacher feedback to students’ presentation performance. The results did not reveal any potential mediators. The mediation results strengthen the indication that only English proficiency could explain students’ outcomes in an oral presentation.
Finally, for the question, "Do self-confidence, teacher feedback, and English proficiency matter in developing students’English oral presentation competence?", this study confirms that English proficiency is the most important element in developing oral presentation competence. It can be that 1) higher proficiency students will likely present better and/or 2) oral presentation can be integrated into class activity as a means to enhance proficiency. Moreover, having confidence and teacher feedback in a presentation course does not necessarily result in improvement in students’presentation performance. It is suspected that self-confidence and teacher feedback may be attached to specific circumstances of contextual practice, including the types of feedback given to students. For instance, Wang et al. (2018) underline that teacher feedback should highlight the acquisition of communicative and oral presentation competence, in which error correction is not the primary objective. Additionally, even though significant differences across academic fields are not identified, the various results from the examinations of the three types of data in this study should express the effects of educational backgrounds and sample size.
Conclusions
The results of this study have several pedagogical implications. Developing students’ oral presentation competence has been considered of importance as it contributes to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes in informing, self-expressing, or persuading the audience (De Grez, 2009). Oral presentation skill is not only included in the 21st-century skills, but also it is a required skill when students enter the workplace (Jackson, 2014). In this instance, the presentation course should be designed in a way that can assist students in acquiring specific linguistic features, ranging from vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, that are essential for a successful presentation. Teacher feedback should be directed upon the construction of such knowledge, not merely on error correction. In the context of the Thai EFL learners, they are shy and feel anxious when they attempt to speak English with others, especially foreigners (Kaur et al., 2016). Thai students prefer to remain silent as they are afraid of making mistakes, mispronounce the words and/or laughed at by their friends (Khamprated, 2012, p. 5). All these challenges, involving anxiety, fear of making mistakes, passivity, shyness, and lack of confidence, should be considered in teacher feedback. When students receive positive and constructive feedback, they will likely build self-confidence, which will consequently improve their English proficiency as well as speaking skills that will be perceptible in their presentation task.
Nonetheless, there are limitations to be acknowledged. This study relied primarily on students’ scores and survey questionnaire data. It is believed that the addition of qualitative data would have offered more insights into the results. Although this study integrated model presentation videos into the course design, a specific analysis was not conducted on this particular treatment. It is assumed that students’ backgrounds, other than their fields of study, may have a role, yet they are not part of the variables of interest in this study. Thus, it is recommended that future studies use a mixed-methods approach that includes other educational backgrounds in the analysis.
To sum up, the findings of this quantitative research indicate the importance of English proficiency over self-confidence and teacher feedback on developing students’ English oral presentation skills. Within self-confidence, two underlying factors are suggested, while teacher feedback is unidimensional. It is important to underline that the majority of the students involved in this study are at a low level of proficiency, which may have lead to self-confidence and teacher feedback not having significant effects as expected. More investigation to further explore this assumption is needed.
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