The research was conducted in a New Taipei Municipal Senior High School located in the northern part of Taiwan. Each year, the school recruits nineteen classes of senior high students. There are forty students in each class. Overall, there are nearly 2,000 students in 57 classes. The research was conducted in the first semester of the 107th academic year. The English speaking/presentation course was carried out as an elective course for 10th grade students. The researcher in the present study was the instructor of the elective course.
The participants in this research were thirty 10th grade students enrolled in the 107th academic year. According to their performance on the Comprehensive Assessment Program for Junior High School, the students were regarded as intermediate achievers in New Taipei City. On average, their recruitment score was 21 (the full score is 36). In addition, most of the participants’ English proficiency was intermediate (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Participants’ English Scores of CAP
Most students in the target senior high school were from middle-class families.
Over 30% of the students had the possibility of going to national universities after they graduated. Most of the participants considered their English proficiency was at an intermediate level on a five-point scale (see Figure 3). Most of the participants had
quite passive; they might have been too scared to deal with their speaking anxiety and shyness. However, they were willing to accept teachers’ assistance and guidance. The participants in the present research needed specific guidance and tangible learning goals
during their learning process.
Figure 3.Self-Assessed English Proficiency
The English Speaking/Presentation Course
Because the study followed an action research design, an English speaking/presentation course in the form of an elective course that met once each week was developed to deal with three crucial problems identified in students’ English-speaking performance: lack of English-speaking fluency, lack of presentation skills, and a high level of speaking anxiety. In response to these, the teacher designed various English speaking practices to help students overcome these problems and boost their speaking proficiency and knowledge of delivering formal presentations.
Curriculum Design
The design of the English speaking/presentation course followed the principles of Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005), an approach that advocates a three-stage backward design process for curriculum planning: (1) identifying desired learning outcomes, (2) determining assessment evidence, (3) planning experiences and
considered the expected outcomes. Because the purpose of the English speaking/presentation course was to solve three problems: students’ lack of speaking fluency, lack of presentation skills, and a high level of speaking anxiety, the desired learning outcomes were thus related to overcoming these problems.
In Stage Two, the teacher decided to use multiple assessments to evaluate students’
learning. For multiple assessments, four types of evidence is suggested in Wiggins and McTighe (2005): performance tasks, academic prompts, quiz and test items, and informational checks for understanding. Given the nature of this speaking program, no quizzes or paper-and-pencil tests were used. Instead, many performance tasks (group discussion, individual and group presentations) and students’ self-evaluation of anxiety levels were adopted to assess whether the desired learning outcomes had been achieved.
In Stage Three, planning learning experiences and instruction, the teacher designed learning activities for students to achieve the above-mentioned desired results.
The specific curriculum design is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. The Design of the English Speaking/Presentation Course Following the Three Stages of Understanding by Design
Theme Design Focus
Stage 1
Identify desired
results
Result 1. Students will improve their speaking fluency.
Result 2. Students will know how to give clear and effective oral presentations with visual aids, body language, and prosodic effects.
Result 3. Students’ speaking anxiety will be reduced.
Stage 2
Determine acceptable evidence (assessment)
Assessment for Desired Result 1
1. Read-aloud tasks in which fluency is the focus of evaluation.
2. A one-to-two minute “Show and Tell” speaking task in which students’ fluency is the focus of evaluation.
3. “Be-a-Reporter” practice for one-to-two minutes in which use of catchy speech openers and fluent introduction of their interviewees are the focus of evaluation.
4. “Pecha Kucha” practice in which students’ fluency in describing pictures on each slide in twenty seconds is the focus of evaluation.
Assessment for Desired Result 2
1. A persuasive speech in which students’ delivery and content of presentations are the main focus of evaluation.
2. An informative speech in which students’ delivery and content of presentations are the main focus of evaluation.
Assessment for Desired Result 3
1. Students’ reports of speaking anxiety experiences from their learning journals during the program.
2. Students’ rating of their speaking anxiety levels before and after the English speaking/presentation course.
Stage 3 reading, echo reading and shadowing to familiarize themselves with spoken English and improve fluency.
2. Guiding students to talk about their meaningful objects with a focus on fluency rather than accuracy.
3. Guiding students to interview their classmates and make a non-stop report based on the interview.
4. Guiding students to use the technique of Pecha Kucha to describe pictures as fast as possible within the time limit.
Instruction for Desired Result 2
1. Guiding students to produce a persuasive speech from drafting outlines to writing scripts.
2. Guiding students to use gambits of presentation.
3. Guiding students to use visual aids, body language (gestures, posture, facial expression) and prosodic effects (intonation) in their presentation.
Instruction for Desired Result 3
1. Building a supportive learning environment where the teacher serves as a facilitator and the students as collaborators,
supporting each other.
2. Guiding students to write a learning journal to reflect on and document their ways to deal with speaking anxiety during their preparation of presentations.
Course Schedule
The English speaking/presentation course was divided into two phases with fluency training as the focus of the first phrase and presentation skills as the focus of the second phrase. Throughout the English speaking/presentation course, the teacher attended to students’ speaking anxiety and made effort to create a learning environment that could reduce their anxiety and increase their confidence in speaking. The weekly schedule of the English speaking/presentation course is outlined in Table 2. All of the worksheets used in the program can be found in the appendices.
Table 2. Course Schedule Training
Focus Time Teaching Activity
Week 1 Course orientation and introduction to English public speaking (see Appendix A and B).
Fluency Training (7 Weeks)
Weeks 2-3
Read-aloud activity: Students practiced speaking with choral reading, echo reading, and shadowing (see Appendix K).
Weeks 3-4
Be-a-reporter activity: Students interviewed their classmates and practiced giving a two-minute speech with interesting openers (see Appendix L).
Weeks 5-6
Show-and-tell activity: Students talked about their meaningful objects by giving a one-to-two-minute speech (see Appendix M).
Weeks 7-8
Pecha Kucha activity: Students practiced speaking English for twenty seconds per slide (see Appendix N).
Presentation Skills Training (10 Weeks)
Week 9 Introduction to the structure of an English presentation (see Appendix O).
Weeks 10-11
1. Showing examples of English presentations.
2. Introduction to how to deliver English presentations with body language (gestures, posture, facial expression, eye contact).
Weeks 12-13
Persuasive speech activity: The teacher provided several absurd products. Students were guided to give a speech to persuade the audience to buy the products (see Appendix P).
Weeks 14-18
Informative speech activity: Students came up with a topic related to something about which they were passionate. They were guided to give a speech on the topic, starting from writing outlines and then scripts.
In the end, students participated in a presentation conference held at National Lan Yang Girls’ High School.
Teaching Procedure
In the current study, conducting an English speaking/presentation course mainly involved the instructor’s demonstration, group discussion, individual and group practice. The teacher usually started a unit with a demonstration of how to use certain skills, followed by students’ individual practice, and/or group discussion, where the researcher worked as a facilitator. Each unit ended with an individual or group oral presentation. Students were allowed to use their first language to discuss and share their thoughts in a group discussion so that every student, whether high or low in proficiency,
could contribute, and their anxiety could be decreased. Table 3 summarizes the instructional strategies used in the course.
Table 3. Instructional Strategies Used in the English Speaking/Presentation Course
Phase Learning Objectives Learning Tasks Instructional Strategies
2. closing statements and inviting questions
Two examples are given below to illustrate the teacher’s teaching procedures. For the unit entitled “Be-a-Reporter,” the teacher’s demonstrated how to make opening statements, create openers with interesting facts, appealing hooks, quotations, personal stories, etc., and to use the “the Rule of Three” to structure a speech. Students then practiced these techniques by themselves (see Appendix L). After that, they worked in pairs on an information-gap activity (“Be-a-Reporter”), in which each pair of students interviewed their partners to collect information. Students were then guided to prepare and deliver a one-and-half-minute individual presentation by organizing the information they collected based on “the Rule of Three” and adding openers and opening statements.
For the unit entitled Pecha Kucha, students were asked to form groups. The teacher demonstrated how to apply the Pecha Kucha format to deliver a speech, along with ways to connect every slide, such as adding an opening, transitional words, and conclusions. After a demonstration, students discussed with their group members how to draft a Pecha Kucha presentation using material the teacher provided, namely, the Introduction of Sun Moon Lake (see Appendix N). After that, each group decided a topic for giving a Pecha Kucha format presentation with pictures at the end of the unit.
Presentation
Each group of students then worked together to collect pictures related to the topic of their choice and practiced elaborating on their drafts of the presentation.