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"Do you Hear What I Say?" A Phenomenological Exploration of International Students' Oral Communication Experiences with PechaKucha Oral Presentations in a US English for Academic Purposes Program.

With the importance of oral communication skills and digital literacy skills for 21st-century learners (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2006), there is an increasing tendency to incorporate technology in language learning and teaching. In this trend, PechaKucha Presentation (PKP), a unique, fast-paced format of giving presentations, has recently been advocated for its benefits in developing learners' oral communication skill in various contexts (Angelina, 2019; Coskun, 2017; Mabuan, 2017). This paper presented a study that explored seven international students' speaking and listening experiences with PKP activities while completing the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program prior to their undergraduate programs in a US university. The study adopted a phenomenological design with semi-structured interviews, artifacts, and observations. Colaizzi's (1978) data analysis framework was employed to provide a comprehensive description of the participants' speaking and listening experiences with PKP. Findings revealed that (1) participants experienced a connection between emotions regarding PK presentations and their English speaking skills; (2) participants described cognitive and metacognitive skill use and awareness due to PK presentations experiences; (3) participants perceived audience as an important factor in presentation decisions; (4) these EAP international students were aware of and critical of their English- speaking skills; (5) they preferred more time for pronunciation and to convey information; (6) EAP peers' pronunciation hindered meaning making; (7), PK meaning- making processes included listening, reading, viewing, and critiquing their peers' presentation performance. The study also offered several recommendations regarding the most practical teaching strategies that emerged from the findings of this research. Further implications that may inform EAP educators and EAP curriculum designers of oral communication skills for international students were also discussed.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2020-1720
Date01 January 2021
CreatorsLe, Van Thi Hong
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceElectronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

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