FACTORS HINDERING THE CONFIDENCE OF ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS IN GIVING ORAL PRESENTATIONS: A CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH-MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Giving oral presentations in English has long been one of the most common form of assessment at tertiary education, especially in English-majored classes. However, the confidence of the presenters in those English-related courses are usually limited by several hindering factors which not only affect the quality of their oral performances but also demotivate them from studying English in general. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to attempt to investigate all possible factors which hinder the confidence of English- majored students while delivering an English oral presentation. Via the employment of case study method as a purely qualitative research design, the study conducted a series of individual semi-structured interviews with nine English-majored sophomores from three English majors of the School of Foreign Languages at Can Tho University. Qualitative data analysis framework by Huberman and Miles (1994) and the coding procedures of grounded theory analysis by Creswell (2007) were applied for this research. The final results demonstrate that the nine cases of English-majored sophomores mostly encountered four main categories of hindering factors, i.e. cognitive factors, behavioural factors, affective factors and physical factors, with a variety of smaller hindrances as sub-categories. The study points out the recursive relationship among the groups of factors and concludes that physical factors are the most striking finding compared to previous research in the field and that affective factors affect the majority of participants under study, the latter of which mirrors findings by Tanveer (2007) and Mazouzi (2013). Practical implications and potential recommendations for further research in similar areas are then suggested.