Abstract:

The establishment of a coherent education system and the reorientation of teaching towards the labour market has led the European Higher Education Area to promote a competence-based training model. The curriculum must promote these competences, enabling university students to competently develop their activity and facilitate their employability. Among the so-called "soft skills", oral communication is one of the most relevant competences for employability. Previous evidence confirmed that the difficulties encountered by university students in their communication skills are a permanent problem. Students' oral skills have been promoted through classroom presentations. However, the lack of explicit training to help them achieve an optimal level of competence can have a negative impact on their learning and performance in both academic and professional environments. Our project aims to address this weakness through an intervention in the classroom. Through this intervention we aim to train students in oral competences, providing them with the adequate tools to improve their academic performance and their future incorporation into the labour market.

Overall, the objectives to be achieved are as follows:
(1) to analyse the oral skills of university students,
(2) to evaluate possible differences between students with different academic profiles,
(3) to provide students with tools to improve their oral skills and
(4) to design training resources to guide students to address this weakness. The experience is developed with students from the Universidad de La Rioja (Spain), from the Bachelor's Degrees in Business Administration and Management, Labour Relations and Human Resources, and Law.

Two questionnaires were used to collect students' perceptions before and after the classroom intervention. The first questionnaire allowed us to know students' self-perceptions of their communication skills and confidence in public speaking. The second questionnaire was implemented to evaluate the intervention impact. In general, the experience was very successful. Of the students who participated in the intervention session, 95% improved their assessment of the importance of oral competences in their academic performance and 98% improved their assessment for their future employability. Furthermore, 85% improved their self-perception of their oral skills and 87% showed their intention to participate in further training activities in speaking competences. In addition, all students consider the implementation of projects that promote oral skills to be important for both their academic and professional performance.

Keywords:

Oral skills, academic performance, employability, soft skills.