Thammasat University students who are interested in English as a Second Language (ESL), education, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.

Making Academic Presentations: What Every University Student Needs to Know is a book by Dr. Robyn Brinks Lockwood, a Lecturer at Stanford University, California, the United States of America, who teaches courses in English listening, speaking, and writing for international graduate students.

The TU Library collection includes several books on making academic presentations.

The publisher’s description of the book follows:

The ability to give a successful presentation in an academic setting is critical to success both on and off campus. Making Academic Presentations describes the five moves, or parts, of a typical presentation and provides examples of language that can be used to successfully accomplish these moves. Although language is vital to giving a good presentation, the book also addresses other factors that influence the success of a presentation, such as overcoming nervousness, nonverbal communication, and pronunciation and paralinguistics.

In an online interview, the author noted:

Many students admitted to U.S. universities or universities in other English-speaking countries already have achieved a certain level of fluency; however, they’re often still surprised by what is needed to succeed in their university classes. Despite many years of English classes, students often find themselves overwhelmed when they must converse in English with native speakers in social conversations, academic discussions, and professional settings, such as presentations for classes or conferences, job interviews, and meetings. The speech events they participate in both on and off the college campus are different from the scripted role plays and sample dialogues they practiced in their textbooks. Leaving the safe haven of their ESL classroom where they practiced English with other second-language learners and being thrust into an authentic environment that doesn’t often follow a script can be difficult for students.

I wanted to prepare my students for the language and structure of common interactions in the settings they were most likely to encounter when they arrived on campus. Since many universities require or recommend a public speaking course and since this is a skill students will use beyond just that one class, I decided one of my books should cover academic presentations. Many students have never given a presentation outside of their English classroom. I wanted to prepare them for what they would have to do once they entered other classrooms and other settings, where they wouldn’t be with their English teacher and other ESL students. I wanted them to be prepared for a non-sympathetic audience comprised of people who don’t look at them as “second-language speakers” but rather as equals with everyone else in the room. I believe my job is more than teaching English; it is also teaching students to succeed at the university and their professional careers. […]

Knowing how to present extends beyond one class dedicated to teaching presentations at the university. My students have shared stories of presenting in history, accounting, science, engineering, education, law, medicine, psychology, and even math classes. The list goes on. Presentation skills are also transferable to far more settings. Students who want to be TAs, for example, will need to present. Students pursuing graduate studies will present in research group meetings, at conferences, and in classes. Presentation skills will be used during job interviews and to persuade people, lead groups, and even make friends. These skills also build confidence and, of course, continue to develop English fluency and improve communication. […]

Let me also make mention here that I teach academic writing at Stanford University as well. Students are often better prepared for writing…or perhaps they’ve just taken more writing courses. We teach them how to write the five-paragraph essay and how to organize their writing for a variety of genres. We often teach sentence framing to incorporate into their writing. The same attention is given by John Swales and Christine Feak in Academic Writing for Graduate Students, where, for example, they teach the three “moves” of an introduction for a research paper. I believe this emphasis on writing is necessary. Writing is an important skill that students continually need to develop. However, we don’t often give this same and necessary attention to developing speaking skills. We offer a variety of speaking courses, yet we sometimes fail to teach beyond scripted dialogues and unrealistic role plays I mentioned earlier. We also tend to describe what we want English to be or what it should be rather than what English really is…how it is actually used by native speakers. As a result, my students were feeling overwhelmed by and afraid of speech events.

Since my writing students so appreciated the moves of writing, I thought presenting speaking the same way would be beneficial, thus, I started preparing lessons for my students that broke speech events into “moves.” It’s an easy way to organize, associate certain language framing with the right moves, and build confidence since students know the steps a speech event will follow. I think students really appreciate a simple breakdown of the speech event into manageable pieces. Since a lot of my students are studying the sciences and engineering, the move-by-move, step-by-step approach is appealing. It was also important to me to create a smaller, less expensive book that we could finish during a term and that could be used with any types of speeches that I wanted my students to practice. […]

Other online advice on giving academic presentations likewise suggests that it is vital to relax and not be too nervous or frightened about failure:

Finally, I think the most important thing I can say is “You are a better speaker than you think you are, and no-one thinks you look nervous.” Practically everyone I know has said at some point “Oh that went really badly, I bet everyone could tell I was nervous” and genuinely in not a single case has that been true. Remember you are far more aware of your body and any slight differences in your voice than anyone else in the audience. They are also far more interested in the talk and the slides than wondering if you look a bit peaky. And even if they do, if anything I think it can make them more sympathetic! We’ve all been there after all.

The other fear I know everyone has is that someone in the audience will make their life miserable during the Q&A. Again, most audiences I’ve known are friendly. Most conferences now have half a dozen parallel sessions competing for audience interest, so remember that if they’ve turned up to yours it’s because they are genuinely interested in what you have to present. Yes, they might ask hard questions, but because they really want to know the answer – they think the work you do is important and so we should ask important questions about it. There’s also nothing wrong with saying “I hadn’t thought about that.” Maybe follow with “That’s really useful to bring up thank you – could we perhaps a quick chat about it after the talk?” This stops you getting embroiled in a live debate on stage (if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy that!), will probably flatter the person asking the question, and best of all gives you an opportunity to have a proper discussion with someone who might be able to help you. […]

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)