Abstract:

University students and graduates are required to have not only expert knowledge but also extensive soft skills. One of them is the ability to present orally in front of an audience. This is an important competence from several points of view. Fist, it is required by employers of the graduates; second, for students at the master or doctoral degree levels this is part of their curricula (academic presentation are required); and third, communication skills acquired in formal presentations help all students in everyday and further professional lives.

For the first two purposes another necessary ability is speaking a foreign language, mostly English. Both requirements can be joined in oral presentations in English.

The importance of English presentations has been understood at Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Czech Republic, for several decades and they have been an indispensable part of curricula in most English courses. Moreover, for ten years chosen students from all faculties participate in Show off competition, which is closely linked with companies – potential employers of the graduates.

The pluses of having presentations in the curriculum from the pedagogical point of view are irreplaceable/obvious. They not only enable university students prove the expertise in the field, their preparation also requires reading background material on the relevant topic, understanding it, and from the written style formulating the ideas in an informal style, organizing the ideas in a logical order and making conclusions, preparing visual aids, communicating with audience in the Q&A time. Also, presentations represent a possible move from teacher-cantered to student-centered learning.

The quality of presentations is largely affected by the student´s approach to this task. Therefore, this is the topic of the presented research. About a hundred university students were given a questionnaire to indicate their attitude in four areas: affective, cognitive, self-management and motivation. The data were treated with factor analysis and standard statistics.

Besides mapping the current state, the results will serve to deal with individual aspects of instruction on this topic and thus enhance students´ performance in this skill.

Keywords:

Oral presentation, University students, Questionnaire, Attitude, Student-centred learning.