Abstract:

The study reports the outcomes of action research designed to explore the impact of formative assessment strategies (Leahy et al., 2005) to enhance the English presentation skills of first-year undergraduate students.

It was conducted in a two-semester Academic English Language Course for students specialising in creative industries. To understand students´ starting point a survey mapping their prior experiences was conducted in October 2020, 2021, and 2022, filled out by 425 respondents. One of the surprising findings was that 8.9 % of students had never had any prior experience with presenting in English. The identified problems covered different competence levels – a morphological level (inaccurate word usage and grammatical incorrectness), lexical (insufficient specific vocabulary size), a phonetic level (poor pronunciation of lengthy words or professional jargon terms), and a syntactic level (oversimplified sentences). Finally, they mostly associated presenting in English with negative emotional states, especially before the presentation (public speaking anxiety, nervousness, stress, pressure).

Consequently, teaching materials and instructional approaches addressing the question “Where am I going? “(Hattie, Timperley, 2007) were prepared. During the term, students were introduced to four formative assessment strategies which were used to reduce the discrepancy between the current and the desired level of their skills. All oral tasks were assessed via the given rubric (Criteria-based learning outcome 1). The criteria were based on their alignment with the learning outcomes and competencies required by the course syllabus. These criteria encompassed factors of organisation, content, delivery, visual aid, language, and ability to handle questions. During the course students reflected on their subtasks (one-minute speech, impromptu speech, etc.) via exit tickets, peer and self-assessments, which elicited evidence of learning (2). Correspondingly, the instructor´s feedback (3) was given to students to move their skills forward. Peer and self-assessments (4) were based on the rubric and practised throughout the term, both in oral and written forms. At the end of the course, students were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies and the instructor reflected her findings to adjust her teaching materials. This process was repeated in the following academic year.

To build students´ self-confidence in public speaking it is a prerequisite to foster a positive classroom environment which Clarke (2014) describes as a “formative classroom environment” where each student is actively involved and protected from academic failure. Students agreed that a positive atmosphere was one of the key factors for their improvement. Thanks to clear assessment criteria, they reflected being able to give peer-feedback of a higher quality than before, still following and enjoying the presentation of their classmates. In their self-assessment, students could apply the same rubric used for peers which made their assessment more effective and focused. Another crucial element mentioned by students was a need for frequent practice in front of an audience. Similarly to the research by Valls-Ratés, Niebuhr and Prieto (2022), the authors believe that virtual reality (VR) training sessions could be the next step to overcoming students´ public speaking anxiety, building their self-confidence and boosting their future performance.

Keywords:

Action research, formative assessment, presentation skills, criteria, feedback, peer-assessment.