STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

ACKNOWDGEMENT

This paper would be an ideal rather than a real work without the support and

encouragement from those people to whom we would like to express our deep gratitude.

First and foremost, we wish to give our parents a sincere "thank you" for being our great

and reliable source of encouragement. But for their strongly mental support, we have not opened

and gone about our primary research.

Faithfully, we would like to show our great respect to our supervisor Ms. Nguyen Thanh

Huong for her advices. With profound knowledge and precious experience in teaching English

skills, she has given us useful and straight-forwarded comments on our progress.

And lastly, we want to thank all the members of class 6A15 for helping in questionnaire

pilot and encouraging us as well as English major sophomores at Hanoi University for helping us

in investigation.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Contents

Abstract .......................................................................................................................................3

I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................4

II. LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................................

1. .............................................................................................................................................

2. .............................................................................................................................................

3. .............................................................................................................................................

III. METHODOLOGY ...............................................................................................................

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ...........................................................................................

1. Students’ attitude toward the Importance of Presentation Delivery and Their Frequency

of practice delivering before delivering a presentation..........................................................

2. Students’ common mistakes and reasons for making these mistakes................................

3. Students evaluation on factors affecting presentation delivery and tips used to improve

their speech .......................................................................................................................

V. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................

References ...................................................................................................................................

Appendix .....................................................................................................................................

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

ABSTRACT

It is obvious that presentation is an important and essential skill. However, presentation

delivery is not easily achieved quickly thus students still have difficulty in delivering

presentation. Due to this reason, this research is conducted in order to investigate English-

majored sophomore's attitude toward presentation delivery, common mistakes and causes of

presentation mistakes. In addition, this research concentrates on measuring the effectiveness of

some factors affecting presentation delivery. Second-year students from Hanoi University's

English Department were invited to join the survey and answer the questionnaire. The research

has revealed that the majority of participants is aware of the importance of presentation delivery

as well as the influence of some elements in speechmaking. Nevertheless, they still have some

difficulties in delivering the speech. Thus, from the review of literature and findings of this

study, some effective strategies are provided to help students improve presentation skills.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

I. INTRODUCTION

As Sellnow (2003) claimed an effective delivery can make presentation more fascinating.

In fact, more than 55% the meaning listener grasp is essentially derived from delivery (Grice &

Skinner, 1998). Therefore, mastering delivery skills is really important and useful for students

who want have an effective speech. Nonetheless, studies about the strategies to own a good

delivery have not been carefully carried out in Vietnam. Because the value of these strategies as

well as useful tips for delivering a presentation, a well-planned research needs to be conducted.

In this project, the second-year English majors' attitudes towards delivering a presentation, their

common mistakes as well as the reasons for making these mistakes when delivering are

examined. The main purpose is to investigate factors affecting presentation delivery and tips

used to improve their delivery skills.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

III. METHODOLOGY

To collect the data, a questionnaire (shown in Appendix) was considered as the most

suitable method as it was a straightforward and economical way to gather figures for analysis.

The questionnaire consists of three main parts. The first part concentrates on students’ attitude

towards delivering a presentation. The second part concentrates on finding out students’ common

mistakes and the reasons cause these ones when presenting a speech. Lastly, the final part

attempts to figure out the student evaluations on the factors affecting the presentation and

strategies used for a good presentation delivery.

The subjects were the sophomore of English Department, Hanoi University and the

majority of those respondents were at the age of 19.

Before the actual survey took place, a pilot survey was trialed by a group of second –

year English majors with the purpose of amending any error before it was carried out. After

consultations, the official survey was conducted at Hanoi University in April, 2017. The

participants were in different classes thus it took one week for the researchers to deliver the

questionnaire sheets. Among 120 questionnaires sent out, of which 100 were considered valid as

all questions were fully answers.

The data analysis procedure followed the survey. Questionnaire were counted and the end

results were gather, and those respective counts represent the idea of the participants.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

IV. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

1. Students’ attitude toward the Importance of Presentation Delivery and Their

Frequency of practice delivering before delivering a presentation.

Students’ Attitude toward the Importance of

Presentation Delivery
9%

Strongly important
Important
Less important
48%
No important

43%

Chart 1.1. Students’ Attitude toward the Importance of Presentation Delivery.

Pie chart 1.1 has visualized the data collected from the questionnaire evaluating the

importance of delivering a presentation to the second-year English majors of Hanoi University.

The great proportion of the participated students (48%) thought delivering a presentation is

strongly important. Besides, 43% of the participants considered presentation delivery important.

The number of participants thought that presentation delivery was “less important” accounted for

9% and none of investigated students thought it unimportant. Although it is relatively surprised

to receive such a large number of students who thought presentation delivery is “important” or

“strongly important”, the result disclosing that almost of investigated students are aware of the

significance is still reasonable after a course learn presentation at English Department.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Students’ Frequency of Practicing delivering

before a Presentation
4%
14%

Not at all
25%
Only 1 time
2-3 times
More than 3 times

57%

Chart 1.2. Students’ Frequency of Practicing delivering before a Presentation.

Pie chart 1.2 shows an investigation on how often students practice before delivering

their presentation. As can be seen from the illustration, making up the biggest proportion of the

chart, over half of the students, 57% to be precise, practice 2-3 times before delivering a

presentation. Meanwhile, exact a quarter (25%) of respondents indicated that they just practice

only 1 time prior to the day of delivery and 4% of participants confessed not to have any

rehearsal before giving their presentation. Though these two groups are in the minority, the 25%

and 4% figure do raise a concern as less than one time of practicing is considered to be not well-

prepared which, definitely influences the effectiveness of the presentation. Only 14% of

investigated students have a good preparation with more than three times of practicing for the

real delivery. That number, however, is considered to be to relatively modest to our expectation

that there would be more students to have such a proper preparation. These below figures have

revealed that though the majority of the English major sophomores do practice presenting before

their presentation delivery, their preparation is a bit negligent as the number of times they take to

practice is pretty limited.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Students' feeling when presenting

2%
17%
25%

1 (Nervous)
2
3
4 (Confident)

56%

Chart 1.3. Students’ feeling when presenting a speech

Pie chart 1.3 illustrates students’ feeling when they deliver their presentation. As can be

seen from the illustration, over half of the students, or 56% to be precise, felt slightly nervous

while just only 2% gave the answer “confident”. One quarter of respondents indicated that they

feel nervous when delivering their presentation, and just one-sixth cited they were slightly

confident. Nelson at al., (2008) have noted, even some experienced presenters also feel nervous

when presenting and recognize that “some nervousness is natural” (p.20). Thus, there is no doubt

that the majority of students (81%) was nervous and slightly nervous when presenting.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Students' assessment of the difficulty of

presentation delivery
12%

1(Easy)
34% 2
3
4 (Difficult)

54%

Chart 1.4. Students' assessment of the difficulty of presentation delivery

Pie chart 1.4 shows the number of children responding how difficult (or easy) their

presentation brings when they deliver the speech. It can be seen from the chart that no student

thought that presentation delivery is easy for them and one-third considered the presentation

delivery to be slightly easy. Meanwhile, just only 12% indicated that it was difficult for students

to present. There are 54 students (54%) responding that the presentation seemed to be slightly

difficult for them to deliver.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

2. Students’ Common Mistakes and Reasons for making these mistakes.

Common mistakes when delivering a presentation

80%
70%
71%
60%
50%
48%
40%
30% 35%
27%
20%
10%
10%
0% 4% 2%
Filler words Bodily action Ignoring speaking Asking too Using slangs other
audience incoherently much slides

Chart 2.1. Common mistakes when delivering a presentation

Bar chart 2.1 figures out students’ common mistakes when delivering a presentation. As

reported in this bar chart, the kind of mistake that students faced most was filler words such as

“um” or “like” accounted for 71%. The symptom of filler words, according to Steven D.Cohen

(2016), was consequence of verbalizing your thought process. When students are thinking

verbally, they use filler words to keep their presentation uninterrupted. As stated by the

respondents, filler words lead to serious drawback. Many investigated second-year students

claimed that filler words distract audience’s ability from understanding particular message or a

certain idea that the speakers are trying to convey in their talk; therefore, these aforementioned

words certainly become a substantial communication barrier to the presenters. Also, of all 100

students investigated, about 48% (equivalent to 48 students) stated they usually encounter

uncontrolled bodily action. Following are “speaking incoherently” and “ignoring audience”

which accounted for 35 and 27 votes respectively. Nearly one tenth of the surveyed students (10

students to be precise) agreed that “asking too much slides” to be a flaw when they present.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Fortunately, only 4% of the participants confirmed that they make mistakes by “using slangs” on

the process of delivering the presentation. Additionally, 2% of the investigated respondents

report to encounter mistakes while having the speech. The above statistics can be seen as a good

signal that most of second-year English language majors are already aware of their common

weaknesses, or in other word, they already self- identify probable weak points which might

hinder the success of their presentation delivery.

Causes of making mistakes

70%
63%
60% 55%

50% 47%

40%
32%
30%
24%
20%

10%
3%
0%
Fear of Many Poor Failed lack of other
failure audience preparation technique confidence
application

Chart 2.2. Reasons why making mistakes

Bar chart 2.2 presents the causes of making mistakes when students delivering a

presentation. The answer from respondents was starling since 63% of them reported “fear of

failure” is the main culprit that leads to aforementioned flaws in delivering a speech. In fact,

speaking in front of many audiences drives speakers in stressful communication situation, in

which, the presenters are usually in pressure and they were in such a panic state. It is obvious

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

that when students have fear of failure, they find it hard to think and fail to produce the most

appropriate words to convey their message, as a result, they will end up use filler words

unconsciously in thought process. Nelson (2009) showed that even experienced presenters also

worry of failure when presenting. Following are other two subjective reasons, i.e., “Poor

preparation “and “lack of confidence” which account for 55 and 47 votes respectively. It can be

drawn from here that a significant number of students are already aware of the decisive role of

their well- prepared groundwork and positive state of mind in their presentation’s fruitfulness.

Besides, nearly one third of the students (32 students to be exact) claimed that the failed

technique application would cause them problems while 24 students blamed it on the number of

listeners. Only 3 surveyed students thought there would be other reasons.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Small
Elements No effect Big effect
effect

Volume 10 55 35
Pitch 2 23 75
Vocal behavior Rate 2 30 68
Pauses 3 27 70
Pronunciation 0 25 75
Physical appearance 20 34 46
Nonverbal communication Gesture 5 31 64
Movement 7 29 64
Eye contact 0 22 78
Facial expression 2 22 76
Visual aid (Object, Handouts, Slides, etc) 3 30 67

Psychology 0 30 70
3. Students’ evaluation on factors affecting presentation delivery and tips used to improve

their speech.

Table 3.1. Students’ evaluations on factors affecting presentation delivery

The table represents 12 different factors affecting presentation delivery by the three main

elements which include “vocal behavior”, “nonverbal communication”, “visual aids” and

“psychology”. From the data collected in table 1, researchers can clearly notice that the majority

of investigated students assessed all these mentioned factors have certain effect to the success of

their presentation. Thus, it can be seen that most respondents perceived twelve factors play an

important role in the presentation delivery.

According to the data collected from this survey, “pitch” and “pronunciation” that are

two factors in vocal behavior received the highest approbation with about three fourths of

students, or 75% to be precise. This result can perhaps be explained by the fact that the best

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

public presenters use their normal pitch in full range (Nelson at al., 2008). Moreover, according

to Sellnow, mispronounced words can negatively affect speakers’ credibility and intelligibility

(2003). In “vocal behavior”, just “volume” received the smallest percent of participants choosing

big effect (35%). Nevertheless, most of students indicated that volume still have certain

influence on their speech delivery because over a half of them agreed with the choice of small

effect.

Comparing with verbal behavior, nonverbal communication received more choices of no

effect. This result showed that there are still some students who do not recognize the influence of

nonverbal communication in presentation delivery even though Shellnow supposed that effective

delivery means effective use of nonverbal elements (2003). Although not large number (20%)

responded “physical appearance” has no effect, this data does raise a concern because personal

appearance plays an important role in speechmaking. Lucas claimed that listeners always look at

presenters before hearing them (1992). In addition, “eye contact” and “facial expression” were

considered as having the most beneficial effect, with 78% and 76% of the students choosing “big

effect”. According to Grice and Skinner, the most important factor of nonverbal cues is speaker’s

face when they present, and their eyes contain more information than any other facial features

(1998).

Finally, the last two elements which are “visual aids” and “psychology” also received

high praise from the students, with 67% and 70% of students choosing “big effect”. Especially,

no respondents denied the influence of “psychology” and only 3% indicated “visual aids” have

“no effect” on the success of presentation delivery that indicated students see the importance of

these elements.

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Very
Tips Never Rarely Often
often
Use microphone 85 15 0 0
Speak with low and high voice tone 5 17 44 34
Make sure that your speed easy to follow 5 24 32 39
Using pause for purpose 0 20 60 20
Look up a dictionary to check the word you
3 12 28 57
have doubts about the pronunciation
Wearing clothing that is typical for your
3 24 43 20
audience and comfortable for you
Practice in front of mirror 53 34 17 0
Move around occasionally, not standing still
10 30 31 29
from the beginning to the end
Spanning the entire audience 10 39 31 15
Keeping your facial expression consistent with
0 20 55 25
the ideas
Avoiding read slides to the audience 10 45 40 14
Looking audience members in the eyes 15 45 30 13

Table 3.2. Students’ frequency of using different tips in presentation delivery

Table 3.2 represents 12 strategies for delivering presentation and shows sophomores’

frequency of using these tips when they present a speech in English Department, Hanoi

University. On overall, in this table, the respondents’ frequency of using each tip is various and

different. It can be seen that some strategies had clear contradistinction in two columns “never”

and “very often”. Firstly, the majority of surveyed students admitted that they have never used

microphones when presenting and no one “often” or “very often” used this method.

Nevertheless, according to Jaffe (2008), microphones that were useful allowed speakers with

ordinary voices to “project their words over greater distances” (p.250). An outstanding number

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

in the column “often” is 60% that means sixty students often “use pauses for purpose” and one

fifths chose “very often”. These positive statistics indicates most of English sophomores at Hanoi

University used this tip frequently in their presentation. It is understandable because as Grice and

Skinner (1998) claimed pauses or silences are an important element to allow the audience time to

reflect upon something speaker have just said or to heighten suspense about something intended

to be expressed.

According to the table, more than a half of 100 surveyed students (53%) confessed that they had

never practiced in front of the mirror and about one thirds (34%) chose “rarely”. However, this

tip is an effective method bringing many benefits related to speakers’ body language. As Lucas

(1992), if presenters practice their speech in front of a mirror, they can control the eye contact

and distracting mannerisms. In addition, ideally, the speaker should delivery 80 to 90 percent or

more of their speech alone without looking at notes (Nelson at al., (2008). “Span the entire

audience”, “Do not read slides to the audience” and “Look audience members in the eyes” have

some statistics that are quite equivalent. In detail, one tenth (10%) “never” used two tips which

are “Spanning the entire audience” and “Avoiding read slides to the audience”. The number of

students who “very often” use these three tips is not much (13 to 15 percent). This result seems

to be understandable because all three tips are related to eye contact skill. Lucas (1992) stated

“Talk to your audience, not to your visual aid” (p.272), in other words, “avoiding read slides to

the audience” helps speak span the entire audience. Moreover, looking audiences in the eye can

not only reduce the anxiety but also perceive listeners’ smile and nods that make presenters more

confident (Sellnow, 2003).

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

V. CONCLUSION

In summary, this paper research has attempted to provide an overview of second - year

students’ challenges in presentation delivery and their utilization of strategies creating a

successful presentation in English Department at Hanoi University. This research showed that

most of students acknowledged the importance of presentation delivery. Besides, second – year

English majors highly appreciated the influence of some elements on the presentation delivery

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

(vocal behavior, nonverbal communication, visual aids and psychology). However, they still had

some mistakes such as filler words, uncontrolled bodily action or speaking incoherently. To

solve the problems, most of students tried to use strategies like using pause for purpose, wearing

clothing that is typical for the audience and comfortable and move around occasionally as

presenting. Nevertheless, using microphone or spanning the entire audience was not noticed by

many students despite their usefulness. This research is conducted in hope that students,

especially students in English Department of Hanoi University would pay more attention to

presentation skill, understand the role of factors affecting their speech and then they could find

their own strategies used in presentation delivery.

Appendix

Questionnaire

Dear participants, we are students at English department, Hanoi university. This survey is

conducted to investigate the perception of second-year English students of Hanoi University

about presentation delivery and the common mistakes they /have to encounter when presenting

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

their speech. All information will be kept confidential and used for research purpose only so

please answer as honestly as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. How often do you practice before delivering your presentation?

o Not at all

o Only 1 time

o 2 – 3 times

o More than 3 times

2. How important is delivery to your presentation?

o Strongly important

o Important

o Less important

o No important

3. How do you feel when delivering a presentation?

Nervous 1 2 3 4 Confident

   

4. How difficult (or easy) is your presentation delivery?

Easy 1 2 3 4 Difficult

   

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

5. What are the mistakes you make when delivering a presentation?

o Filled words (“um, er …”)

o Uncontrolled bodily action

o Ignoring audience

o Speaking incoherently

o Asking too much slides

o Using slangs

o Others: …………………

6. What are the causes of these mistakes?

o Fear of failure

o Many audiences

o Poor preparation

o Failed technique application

o Lack of confident

o Others: …………………….......................

7. How do these factors affect your presentation delivery?

No Small Big
Elements
effect effect effect

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Volume      

Pitch      

Vocal behavior Rate      

Pauses      

Pronunciation      

Physical appearance      

Gesture      

Nonverbal communication

Movement      

Eye contact

Facial expression

Visual aid (objects. Handouts, Slides, etc)

Psychology
8. How often do you use these tips to have a successful presentation delivery?

Very
Tips Never Rarely Often
often
Use microphone
Speak with low and high voice tone
Make sure that your speed easy to follow

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STRATEGIES USED FOR PRESENTATION DELIVERY

Using pause for purpose

Look up a dictionary to check the word you

have doubts about the pronunciation

Wearing clothing that is typical for your

audience and comfortable for you

Practice in front of mirror
Move around occasionally, not standing still

from the beginning to the end

Spanning the entire audience
Keeping your facial expression consistent with

the ideas
Avoiding read slides to the audience
Looking audience members in the eyes

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