Sharon Hartle and Silvia Cavalieri
Expertise in academic English presentation skills requires mastery of a specific skill set in the 21st century. Giving an academic presentation involves the constant interplay between effective oral delivery, content organisation and the successful use of presentation software. This article summarises the main initial findings of a pilot study and the subsequent measures implemented on a course to teach specific academic English presentations skills for PhD students. Our research explored how far specific learning strategies could be correlated with performance gain on the course, which was organized by the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department at Verona University for PhD students of the Department of Human Sciences. Learner perceptions of the usefulness of the process were measured quantitatively and qualitatively through analysis of learner production and interviews. The study focused on perceived strengths and weaknesses in the learning process. The aim was to use these findings to inform the development of an effective framework for the teaching of such skills, which are under-researched, as has often been underlined in the literature (Ennis & Petrie, 2020; Littlewood, 2014; Wette, 2018). The section of the study to be presented in this article focuses on the strategies that led to effective performance gain and on presenting the task-based framework adopted on our courses as a result.
