Introduction

What I would like to do in this proposal is to outline the most frequent

problems that students usually have with spoken presentations at college. The
final section makes recommendations as to how these difficulties could be
improved.

Current situation

Feedback from a large number of university students suggest that a spoken

presentation in front of other people represents a moment of stress, tension
and nervousness for the vast majority of them, mostly because they are not
used to it. Many graduates find that an oral presentation can be an
overwhelming situation where they normally feel unconfident and
uncomfortable. The result are boring and static presentations with highly poor
non-verbal language. Moreover, students frequently find hard to express in a
clear and concise way and tend to use too much text in their presentations,
generally offering little visual appeal to the audience. Furthermore, another
typical mistake is to memorize or read the information, which can cause
unnatural speeches.

Key needs to be addressed

It is believed that lessons at college are still considerably theoretical and not
participatory. Under no circumstances should teachers keep giving monologue
classes, but they should start encouraging debate and participation among
students in order to improve their oral communication skills and their lack of
self-confindence. The only way to beat the fear of public speaking is to
confront it, and that comes with practice and more practice.

Recommendations

If these recommendations are implemented, the situation is bound to improve.

I would suggest the following both to the school director and students:
● Encourage teachers to offer more dynamic lessons with higher student
participation to improve their ability to express themselves in front of
others.
● Consider offering training courses on how to communicate effectively to
all students.
● Practise your presentation as much as possible. Rehearse to the point
that you are so familiar with your subject matter, you could deliver your
presentation as easy as having a conversation with a friend.
● Use storytelling for a successful presentation. Talking about yourself
and including personal anecdotes to illustrate the points you are trying
to make can be really powerful tools to connect with everyone listening.