As a result of the analysis of the presentations included in presentation skills teaching materials in the first part of this study and the wider findings of the PhD research, the Presentation Skills course has changed considerably over the years. The analysis of the examples in the teaching materials revealed that the separate approach of Effective Presentations (Comfort, 1995) provides students with much less contextual information about the presentations than the other integrated approach books. Since the Presentation Skills course at IBS relies heavily on this book and the students do not yet have enough business experience to contextualise the presentations, it was considered of vital importance to provide them with more guidance on the background of business presentations. With this in mind, several new topics on the rationale of presentations were added to the Presentation Skills module to be covered during the first three weeks of teaching. These topics include defining the genre of business presentations and pointing out to students the difference between academic and business talks, researching the roles
of the participants and identifying the aim of the talk, or the communicative purpose. Only after these aspects have been clarified does the course continue with the other units like structuring, language and visual aids.
The change in the syllabus is also reflected in the assessment procedure. The written test was eliminated and marks for class contribution were added instead to boost and acknowledge the students’ activity during the workshops. This currently accounts for 10% of the grade. The marking criteria of the oral test were also widened to include how well the context had been defined and to what degree the content of the talk matched this background. To help students define and visualise the context of the talk, five typical business presentation situations have been provided for students to choose from. They can be seen in Appendix H. The presentation situations are all internal company talks between representatives of various departments. The students are divided into groups of three to five and asked to chose one of the situations for the whole group. Then the roles are divided among the students each representing a different department within the company.
Once they have identified the situation and selected the roles, they find a particular company, product or service to talk about. Finally, each student prepares a presentation on the selected topic from the point of view of his/her department and gives to talk to the colleagues from the other departments. This system of selecting situations and roles brings the students closer to the reality of business presentations and helps them to identify the context of the talks more easily. In these simulations, the students now know who they are talking to and why those people would be interested in their speech. It also emphasises to students the importance of the preparation process behind the talk. The need for this process rather than product approach was motivated by one of the findings of the analysis of the presentations in teaching materials. As part of this simulation process and bringing
the presentations closer to reality, students are also asked to write a report of 1000 words summarising the research upon which their presentation is based. The report is worth 30%
of their grade and seems to be a much better accompaniment to the presentation than the written test, as many company presentations are actually based on reports.
For some of the empirical studies, the camera was used not only at the end of the semester, but during the course of instruction too, in order to follow students’ progress.
The students were encouraged to view the recordings and comment on their performance.
This practice was considered to be very useful by both the students and the teachers and has therefore now been retained as standard practice. Students are now recorded at least once during the course of the semester so that they might have a chance to watch their performances.
Two more of the findings of the analysis of presentations in teaching materials have also led to changes in the module. These include the need for authentic presentations and importance of stressing the role of structural markers in monologues. The lack of authenticity of the professional presentations provided as examples to students is compensated for by the use of real-life presentations streamed directly into the classroom form the Internet. With technological developments, it is now very easy to find talks by well-known business leaders and CEOs on YouTube and watch them with the students since all the classrooms at IBS have the necessary equipment. Steve Jobs’ iPhone product launch presentation, for example, is now used regularly during instruction. Finally, the importance of overtly marking the structure of the talk features more prominently in the course with particular emphasis being given to exercises focusing on signalling phrases.
These exercises include Unit 4 on Linking The Parts in Effective Presentations (Comfort, 1995) and tasks 7.2a and 7.2b of Business Builder (Emmerson, 1999).
All of the changes introduced to the course were accompanied by and supported by a reclassification of the subject, from a language-focused strand of the Core English module belonging to the English Department at IBS to a full, independent skills module at the Management Skills Department. The change in status complements the shift in the overall aims of the course from practicing language elements which are frequently found in presentations to developing the abilities to go through the process of planning, developing and performing a business presentation. Figure 9 illustrates the changes of the module’s status and the constant updating of various components.
Course History
1994 1998 2000 2002 2005 2007
ENGLISH SKILLS
STRAND MODULE
English for Business and International Studies
Core English
English Department Presentation Skills
Management Department Presentation Skills
Teaching materials
Use of camera Marking
criteria
Group presentations
Figure 9. History of the Presentation Skills course.
6. COMPARING HIGHER AND LOWER GRADED PRESENTATIONS