TEFL trainees’ attitude to and self-efficacy beliefs of academic oral presentation

Abstract

An oral presentation is an essential skill for successful academic and professional careers. Trainees’ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs about oral presentation play significant roles in their oral presentation development in a foreign language context. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore TEFL trainees’ attitudes to and self-efficacy beliefs of oral presentation and the association between the two variables. A concurrent mixed-methods design was adopted to address the research questions. A systematic random sampling technique was employed to select 150 M.A. trainees at post course works from four public universities in Ethiopia. However, only 123 (82%) filled out and returned attitude and self–efficacy beliefs scale questionnaires. Besides, five trainees were randomly selected for retrospective interviews. Mean scores, standard deviation, Pearson product-moment correlation, ANOVA and Post hoc methods were utilized to analyze quantitative data, while thematic verbal descriptions were employed to analyze the qualitative data. The questionnaires and interviews showed that TEFL trainees had highly favorable attitudes toward oral presentation. Although the results from the questionnaire indicated the trainees had high self-efficacy beliefs towards oral presentation, the interview revealed they had middling confidence in an oral presentation due to their poor English language proficiency, as English is a foreign language to them. Moreover, a positive and significant moderate correlation was found between the trainees’ attitudes to and self-efficacy beliefs of oral presentations.

Keywords:

• attitude
• academic presentation
• attitude to oral presentation
• oral presentation
• self-efficacy beliefs

Public interest statement

English language has been serving as a medium of instruction from junior secondary school to tertiary education in Ethiopia. Since it is a foreign language, students do not have opportunity to interact with outside of classrooms. As a consequence, most of them have poor English language proficiency. At university education, we observed the students showing fear and anxiety of making oral presentation in front of a crowd. To this effect, we explored TEFL trainees’ attitudes to and self-efficacy beliefs of oral presentation with the hope of working to encourage and nurture our trainees’ oral presentations. The results displayed TEFL trainees had highly favorable attitudes toward oral presentation. Besides, the results obtained from the questionnaire indicated the trainees had high self-efficacy beliefs while the interview results disclosed moderate confidence in an oral presentation. We forwarded our recommendations to the concerned stakeholders to alleviate the problems.

Acknowledgements

We want to acknowledge Arba Minch University for funding this study. We also extend our gratitude to the head of the research coordination office at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) for his direct facilitation of research funds and timely responses to any query we had. We also thank TEFL trainees for providing us with the data for the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Abate Demissie Gedamu

Abate Demissie Gedamu has received his M.A and Ph.D. in TEFL from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He has taught English at various levels and institutions for more than 25 years. Currently, he has been teaching and supervising M.A students and PhD candidates who are conducting their theses/dissertation at Arba Minch University. Besides, he has numerous publications on reputable journals. He has keen in conducting research related to language teaching, assessment, feedback, thesis supervision, ICT in education, etc.

Tesfaye Habtemariam Gezahegn

Tesfaye Habtemariam Gezahegn obtained his M. Ed. from the affiliated College of St. Mark and St. John, Exeter University, UK, and his PhD in TEFL from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He is an Associate Professor in TEFL at Arba Minch University. He has also been supervising M.A and Ph.D. students in TEFL and conducting studies on diverse topics in ELT and ICT in education for more than 22 years.