Series of Micro-tasks Leading to a Successful Academic Presentation and Formal Summary
Hana Katrňáková, Czech Republic
Hana Katrnakova has been teaching English to lawyers at Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic since 1996. Her previous experience includes teaching linguistics and methodology to future teachers of English. She received training in methodology at the University of Lancaster, University of Warwick and in Pilgrims courses. She holds MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham (UK) and a PhD in Linguistics from Masaryk University (CZ). She has been involved in videoconferencing since 2004.
E-mail: Hana.Katrnakova@law.muni.cz
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Introduction
Methodology
Procedure
Conclusions
Suggestions for further reading
I am sure that a large number of teachers train their students on how to give a successful academic presentation which would be of interest to their audience. According to research among our university graduates and HR professionals in large companies within the Compact Project, the skill of delivering presentations is one of the most important soft skills which can increase the employability of graduates.
Here, I am going to share a few micro-tasks which can help students to present an academic topic and deal with questions successfully, thereby increasing audience attention towards the presentation. There are also written tasks set together with the oral presentations, which help students to practise pieces of writing at various levels of formality, mainly semi-formal and formal summaries.
The following tasks are completed during our videoconferencing sessions in an international environment between a rather homogeneous group of Czech and Slovak students of law, and international Erasmus students at the University of Aberystwyth, UK. All these activities can be carried out in a standard classroom.
Students are involved in series of individual steps called micro-tasks in which they build their expertise and skills step by step. During this practice they gain more self-confidence and their final production is thus usually much better than their first initial attempts.
Students´ self-confidence at the start can be described on a scale between too shy – extremely confident and the teacher tries to provide enough encouragement, advice and help to support students in their advancement.
Since the students are asked to present a chosen topic in groups of three, they have to co-operate whether they like it or not because everybody has to take part in a presentation. The final macro-task is usually a nice and natural combination of speaking and writing again ranging from informal exchange of information and feedback in a closed Facebook group or during videoconferencing session up to a formal summary of their presentation and serves as a proof that joint team effort and building on individual´s strong points brings success.
Students receive complex feedback from a group and from a teacher on their performances, sometimes it is for the first time in their life and they are frequently surprised by their body language and other things when they watch themselves from a recording or when they hear feedback from their peers.
Micro-tasks are spread over a period of 3 to 8 weeks and lead to a macro-task in the final session, which is a presentation and formal summary.
Step 1
Students form groups of three to briefly present a topic to the audience (in our case, it is a virtual classroom of international students), outlining the structure of their future presentation and individual points they want to focus on. Topics may vary from rather specific ones, e.g. Introduction of the New Civil Code in the Czech Republic, intercultural like Stereotypes and national identities to more general ones like Current situation in Ukraine. Students are given freedom to choose a topic of their interest, nevertheless they have to agree on it within a group, so they practice negotiation skills and have to make compromises.
Step 2
The audience listens to the presentation on a topic outline and suggests adjustments to the same, e.g.: to expand the topic, narrow it down, use a case study, carry out an action research or a survey, and so forth.
Step 3
In the session that follows, students do a simple argumentation exercise in which they have to either defend the statement related to the topic or provide opposing arguments; this must be done within a certain period of time (usually two minutes). The statements are prepared in advance by teachers as well as students. First the statements are brainstormed, then shortlisted and agreed on by both sides of the virtual classroom. This exercise is often demanding when students are allocated roles (for or against) with which they personally disagree. Also, they are not well-equipped yet to respond to the challenging arguments of their opponents.
Step 4
In the meantime, in the period between the introduction of the topic and final presentation and outside class, individual groups prepare a simple web page on the topic of their choice and/or provide a brief semi-formal abstract of their presentation in a closed Facebook group, having incorporated changes suggested by the audience. They also provide interesting links and further background information within their closed Facebook group. At this stage, other students, who will be in the audience, may also suggest some changes or provide links for future presenters. This communication is fairly informal.
Step 5
Students in their groups deliver the presentation, which should last between 10 to 15 minutes. They are asked to prepare a task for the audience to make their presentation even more lively, and/or raise a controversial question to generate discussion. After the presentation, there is an academic discussion on the topic. Each presenting group has to provide a formal abstract of their presentation, which is available before they deliver their presentations and is assessed by the teacher together with the presentation.
Step 6
The audience evaluates the performance of the presenters, highlighting their strong and weak points within the virtual classroom after the end of discussion. On occasion, further communication within the closed Facebook group may take place on the topic.
Step 7
In a separate class, outside the VC environment, the teacher briefly discusses with presenters and the rest of the class any points which were found to be surprising. From our experience, these are usually caused by differences in students´ cultural backgrounds.
We have been practising the procedure outlined above, i.e. micro-tasks leading to macro-tasks, over a number of years both in international environment through videoconferencing as well as in ´standard´ courses. Students mention in their individual open feedback at the end of the course what they gained in this complex activity. They frequently point up building their self-confidence, improvement in speaking and writing, intercultural experience, team building and team work experience and learning other new skills, e.g. creating a web page, creating a visual presentation, developing tasks for the audience, facing challenging questions.
Suggestions for further reading below may provide more in-depth background into this area.
Dudley-Evans, T., St.John, M.J. (1998) Developments in English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge: CUP.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell.
Holliday, A., Hyde, M., Kullman, J. (2004) Intercultural communication. London and New York: Routledge.
Hradilová, A., Katrňáková, H., Morgan, J. and Štěpánek, L. (2011) ´Videoconferencing and Community of Practice Interaction. Semantic, Pragmatic and Intercultural Aspects of Students´ Communication in English Language Classes.´ Discourse and Interaction 4, Issue 1, 35-49.
Hyland, K. (2006) English for Academic Purposes. London and New York: Routledge.
Koester, A. (2004) The Language of Work. Oxon: Routledge.
Kress, G. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discourse. The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
Lankshear, C., Snyder, L. and Green, B. (2000) Teachers and Technoliteracy. Managing Literacy, Technology and Learning in Schools. St. Leonards, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Lee McKay, S. (2002) Teaching English as an International Language. Oxford: OUP.
Morgan, J. (2008) Methodology of Video-conferencing – Theoretical Background in English. INVITE project Leonardo da Vinci.27.1.2010. Online document. 4 February 2011. http://invite.lingua.muni.cz¨
Seidlhofer, B. (2011) Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: OUP.
Snyder, I. (2003) ´A new communication order: Researching literacy practices in the network society.´ In: Goffman, S., Lillis, T., Maybin, J. and Mercer, N. (eds) (2003) Language, Literacy and Education: A Reader. Stoke on Trent. Trentham Books/Open University.
Swales, J.M. (1990) Genre Analysis. Cambridge: CUP.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
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