A study on the difficulties in giving english oral presentations faced by second year students of english teacher education major at danang university of foreign language studies

ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
----------

BÁO CÁO TỔNG KẾT
NGHIÊN CỨU KHOA HỌC SINH VIÊN
Đề tài:
A STUDY ON THE DIFFICULTIES IN GIVING ENGLISH ORAL
PRESENTATIONS FACED BY SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS OF
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION MAJOR AT DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

Sinh viên thực hiện: Phạm Hoàng Minh Tâm
Lớp: 19SPA01
Khoa: Sư Phạm Ngoại Ngữ

Đà Nẵng, tháng 5 năm 2021


ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

BÁO CÁO TỔNG KẾT
NGHIÊN CỨU KHOA HỌC CỦA SINH VIÊN
NĂM HỌC 2020 - 2021

A STUDY ON THE DIFFICULTIES IN GIVING ENGLISH ORAL
PRESENTATIONS FACED BY SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS OF
ENGLISH TEACHER EDUCATION MAJOR AT DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

Thuộc nhóm ngành khoa học: Giáo học pháp
Sinh viên thực hiện: Phạm Hoàng Minh Tâm
Lớp: 19SPA01. Khoa: Sư phạm Ngoại ngữ
Ngành học: Sư phạm tiếng Anh

Đà Nẵng, tháng 5 năm 2021


ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
THÔNG TIN KẾT QUẢ NGHIÊN CỨU CỦA ĐỀ TÀI
1. Thông tin chung:
- Tên đề tài: A study on the difficulties in giving English oral presentations faced by
second-year students of English Teacher Education major at Danang University of
Foreign Language Studies.
- Sinh viên thực hiện: Phạm Hoàng Minh Tâm
- Lớp: 19SPA01
Khoa: Sư phạm Ngoại ngữ
Năm thứ: 2
2. Mục tiêu đề tài:
This research aims to explore the difficulties of English academic oral presentation faced
by second-year students of English Teacher Education major at Danang University of
Foreign Language Studies and possible causes of these difficulties.
3. Tính mới và sáng tạo:
This research was conducted to have a closer look into some of the common difficulties
the second-year students of English Teacher Education major at Danang University of
Foreign Language Studies face in giving English oral presentations and their causes.
4. Kết quả nghiên cứu:
The main difficulties faced by the students were grammatical usage, controlling their
nerves and handling difficult questions from the audience. The findings showed that there

were three causes which contribute to their difficulties: low level of English proficiency,
lack of confidence and bad voice quality.
5. Đóng góp về mặt kinh tế - xã hội, giáo dục và đào tạo, an ninh, quốc phòng và khả
năng áp dụng của đề tài:
- The findings of this research will help students to find suitable solutions to improve
their oral presentation skills.
- The results may assist teachers in their teaching and assessing process as they have
gained more insight into the challenges their students face.
- The research would be a reliable source of information for other studies in the future.
6. Công bố khoa học của sinh viên từ kết quả nghiên cứu của đề tài (ghi rõ tên tạp chí
nếu có) hoặc nhận xét, đánh giá của cơ sở đã áp dụng các kết quả nghiên cứu (nếu có):
Xác nhận của Giáo viên hướng dẫn

Đà Nẵng, ngày 26 tháng 4 năm 2021
Sinh viên chịu trách nhiệm chính
thực hiện đề tài
(ký, họ và tên)


ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ NẴNG
TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ
THÔNG TIN VỀ SINH VIÊN
CHỊU TRÁCH NHIỆM CHÍNH THỰC HIỆN ĐỀ TÀI
I. SƠ LƯỢC VỀ SINH VIÊN:
Họ và tên: Phạm Hoàng Minh Tâm

Ảnh 4x6

Sinh ngày: 21 tháng 10 năm 2001
Nơi sinh: Đà Nẵng.

Lớp: 19SPA01

Khóa: 2019

Khoa: Sư phạm Ngoại ngữ.

Địa chỉ liên hệ: H1/17K32 Phan Đăng Lưu, Hòa Cường Bắc, Hải Châu, Đà Nẵng.
Điện thoại: 0394755241

Email:

II. QUÁ TRÌNH HỌC TẬP (kê khai thành tích của sinh viên từ năm thứ 1 đến năm
đang học):
* Năm thứ 1:
Ngành học: Sư phạm Tiếng Anh

Khoa: Sư phạm Ngoại ngữ

Kết quả xếp loại học tập: Giỏi
Sơ lược thành tích:
* Năm thứ 2:
Ngành học: Sư phạm Tiếng Anh

Khoa: Sư phạm Ngoại ngữ

Kết quả xếp loại học tập: Giỏi
Sơ lược thành tích:
Ngày 26 tháng 4 năm 2021
Xác nhận của Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ

Sinh viên chịu trách nhiệm chính

(ký tên và đóng dấu)

thực hiện đề tài
(ký, họ và tên)


ABSTRACT
As doing presentations in English is one of the most important skills for an English
teacher, this research was conducted on 42 second-year students of English Teacher
Education major at Danang university of Foreign Language Studies to identify their
difficulties in making English oral presentations and look for some common causes of the
problems they were facing. The questionnaire was adapted from Nguyen Thi Van Ha’s
research, the results were coded and analyzed using Excel 2016. Based on the results, the
main difficulties faced by these pre-service teachers were grammatical usage, controlling
their nerves and handling difficult questions from the audience. According to the
students’ opinions, there were three causes which contributed to their difficulties: low
level of English proficiency, lack of confidence and bad voice quality. Hopefully, the
findings of this research will assist teachers as well as pre-service teachers in their career
by enabling them to have better understanding of how to give a successful English oral
presentation.
Key words: English oral presentation, pre-service teachers, difficulties, causes.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1
1. Rationale ........................................................................................................... 1
2. Scope of the study ............................................................................................. 2

3. Aims .................................................................................................................. 3
4. Objectives ......................................................................................................... 3
5. Research question ............................................................................................. 3
6. Significance ...................................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW.. 5
I - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ....................................................................... 5
1. The definition of oral presentation: .................................................................. 5
2. The importance of oral presentation: ................................................................ 5
3. The components of an oral presentation: .......................................................... 6
4. The fear of presenting among students: ............................................................ 7
II -

LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 8

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................... 11
1. Research design .............................................................................................. 11
2. Participants and sampling ............................................................................... 11
3. Instruments...................................................................................................... 11
4. Validity and reliability .................................................................................... 12
5. Data collection ................................................................................................ 12
6. Data analysis ................................................................................................... 12
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ....................................................... 14
I - RESULTS .......................................................................................................... 14
II -

DISCUSSION ................................................................................................. 22

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS . 24
I - CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .............................................. 24
II -

LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................... 24


TABLE OF FIGURES

Table 1: students' difficulties in preparation ...................................................................... 14
Table 2: Students' difficulties in Organization ................................................................... 15
Table 3: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Getting and maintaining audience's attention 16
Table 4: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Body Language .............................................. 17
Table 5: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Language Use ................................................. 17
Table 6: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Time Management ......................................... 18
Table 7: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Anxiety Management ..................................... 18
Table 8: Students' difficulties in Delivery: Handling the audience's question ................... 19
Table 9: Students' difficulties in Evaluation....................................................................... 20
Table 10: Students' causes of difficulties ........................................................................... 21

TABLE OF ABBREVIATION

No.
1
4
3
6
5
2

Abbreviation
AS
D

E
TS
VD
VE

Full form
Average score
Difficult
Easy
Total Score
Very Difficult
Very Easy


CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Despite the rise of technology and how it has made communication easier, human contact
still plays an essential role in our society. Especially, how to express your idea fluently in
the international language, English. How to study and teach English effectively is always
a big question to both teachers and students. To become successful in learning English, a
learner has to make an effort to perfect four main skills: reading, listening, speaking and
writing. Beside that, oral presentation skill is one of the most important proficiencies
needed for higher education and future career. One of the core competencies for higher
educated professionals relates to the ability to present (Ginkel et al., 2015). Students
learning at colleges and universties need, in addition to academic growth, to be equipped
for the world of work through the ability to give a successful oral presentation (Nowreyah
et al., 2015). Oral presentation, according to Levin and Topping (2006), is planned and
practiced speech that is not memorized or read from notes but is introduced by a presenter
to the audience. As a matter of fact, giving an effective presentation requires a mastery of
broad range of skills and techniques. To achieve the objective of the presentation, the

presenter is supposed to master the abilities to identify the purpose, topic, theme,
organization so that the audience can easily follow the talk (Nguyen, 2010). In addition to
that, the speaker’s use of intonation, articulation, stress, pacing, emphasis, etc., to get the
listeners’ attention and concentration is considered essential to contribute to his or her
success.
In the context of Vietnamese education, English is taught as a compulsory subject for 12
years in general curriculum. Most of the students learn the language in the classroom or
some extra classes and from language teachers who are native speakers of Vietnamese.
The students spend most of their time doing grammar and vocabulary exercises instead of
practicing oral presentations (Nguyen, 2010). Promoting oral communication skills,
which requires students to practice in real-life situations, is therefore completely
overlooked. As a result, many highschool graduates are unable to express their ideas or
engage in real conversation.
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In spite of having been extensively researched, most of the earlier researchs were done on
undergraduate students from other majors, such as engineering, medicine and bussiness
(Preub et al., 2010; Radzuan & Kaur, 2011; Alwi & Sidhu, 2013). Although there was one
research conducted by Nowreyah, Muneera and Hanan in 2015 in which the participants
were students who enrolled in a four-year pre-service teacher education, the importance
of this skill in the teaching career was not emphasized.
As an educator, it is imperative that every element should contribute to the students’
learning experience. Giving lectures is a form of oral presentation. During the lecture, a
teacher as well need to incorporate a variety of skills including intonation, eye-contact,
speech preparation and engaging the audience (Cook, 2018). As one of the biggest centre
of English teacher training in Vietnam, the students whose major is English Teacher
Education at Danang University of Foreign Language Studies are going to be, in the
foreseeable future, English teachers and lecturers. For these students, obtaining the ability
to express and explain ideas successfully through oral presentations is no longer an

individual matter but a responsibility. However, as learners, many are still experiencing
difficulties in giving English oral presentations. As a second-year student of English
Teacher Education major at Danang University of Foreign Language Studies myself, I
realise that even after almost 2 years of constant effort to improve this skills, many of my
peers still struggle to give good oral presentations in English. Many students seem to lack
the skills and confidence to make effective presentations. They know the topics and ideas,
but their presentations do not go well (Nguyen, 2010).
Therefore, it is motivated to conduct this research to have a closer look into some of the
common difficulties that the second-year students of English Teacher Education major at
Danang University of Foreign Language Studies face in giving English oral presentations
and their causes. Hopefully, knowing the problems will push these learners to work out
some solutions to enhance their performance in class as well as in their future career.
2. Scope of the study
This research was confined to studying into the difficulties second-year students whose
major is English Teacher Education of Danang University of Foreign Language Studies
2


encounter in giving English oral presentations in the classroom setting. The information
collected for this study is from the students’ viewpoint. Furthermore, this research was
conducted only on 42 sophomores (academic year 2019 - 2023) of English Teacher
Education major, Foreign Language Teacher faculty, University of Foreign Language
Studies, the University of Danang.
3. Aims
This research aims to explore the difficulties of English academic oral presentation face
by second-year students of English Teacher Education major at Danang University of
Foreign Language Studies and possible causes of these difficulties.
4. Objectives
This paper is carried out:
-

To find out the difficulties second-year students of English Teacher Education
major at Danang University of Foreign Language Studies have in giving English
oral presentations during classes.

-

To explain why second-year students of English Teacher Education major at
Danang University of Foreign Language Studies have these difficulties in giving
English oral presentations during classes.
5. Research question

To obtain this objective, we need to gather information as to find answers for these
following questions:
(1) What are the difficulties faced by second-year students of English Teacher Education
major in giving English oral presentations?
(2) What are the causes of their difficulties?
6. Significance
This study was conducted with the hope that its findings will be beneficial for the students
and lecturers at English Teacher Education faculty, Danang University of Foreign
Language Studies, as well as learners and teachers of English in general. It focuses on oral
presentation since relatively few studies were devoted to examining this facet, not to
3


mention in an EFL context (Nguyen, 2010). Hopefully, after seeing some major
difficulties second-year students of English Teacher Education major usually encounter in
giving an English oral presentation and their causes, these EFL students will understand
the root of their problems and find a suitable solution to improve the practice of this
particular skill. As for the teachers, the results of this research may assist them in the

teaching and assessing process as they have gained more insight into the challenges their
students are facing, thus, make some suggestions to deal with these difficulties. Moreover,
the participants who are sophomores of English Teacher Education major may as well
make good use of this research’s findings to achieve the goal of a successful teaching
performance in the future. Lastly, this study would be a reliable source of information for
researchers who wish to carry out studies on similiar issues later on.

4


CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND
LITERATURE REVIEW
I - THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
1. The definition of oral presentation:
According to Ohio Wesleyan University in their book “Guidelines for Oral
Presentations”, cited in Nguyen’s research (2010), oral presentation is a “brief
discussion of a focused topic delivered to a group of listeners in order to impart
knowledge or to stimulate discussion. They are similar to short papers with an
introduction, main body and conclusion. The ability to give brief presentations is a
learned skill and the one that is called on frequently in the workplace” (p.9). Or as De
Grez (2009, p.5) defines, oral presentation is: “the combination of knowledge, skills,
and attitudes needed to speak in public in order to inform, self-express, to relate and to
persuade”. In other words, an oral presentation simply involves explaining something
to an audience (Cook, 2018). An oral presentation can be given as an individual or as
part of a group. Because of logistics and the demands of the curriculum, oral
presentations tend to be quite short – perhaps 10 minutes for an undergraduate and 1520 minutes for a postgraduate. It also might add components of technology, such as
slide show, video clip or audio recording. The most common format involves one or
two students presenting during class time with a follow-up question and answer
session (“oral presentation”, 2021).
2. The importance of oral presentation:

Researchers and educationalists have been preoccupied lately trying to emphasize the
role of oral presentation in students’ academic careers, especially at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels (Liow, 2008; Wolfe, 2008; Munby, 2011), quoted on Nowreyah,
Muneera & Hanan’s research (2015). Presentation skills help students to present in the
classroom what they have learned. It is the way they can explain more deeply and
study the topic (Sharma, 2018). The presenting students then take on a teaching role in
sharing that new information to the class through their presentation.
5


Oral presentations as assessment items are becoming increasingly more common at
tertiary level. There are a number of very important reasons for this. Firstly, oral
presentations test students’ cognitive skills, allow them to demonstrate their ability to
generate and synthesise new ideas. Secondly, it gives them the opportunity to present
what they have learnt in an analytical way. Thirdly, during an oral presentation, the
tertiary classroom can be turned into an active learning environment as well as give the
students the chance to learn from their peers and share their knowledge.
The most important reason is that oral presentation skills are an essential graduate
attribute and future employers will be looking for these skills in particular. The skills
that the presenters develop by practicing giving oral presentations will have a wide
range of practical applications in the workplace. Practicing presenting an oral
presentation prepare the undergraduates for formal presentations that they may be
required to give in the workplace and build up their confidence (ACU National, 2021).
In this case, for the pre-service English teachers, presenting skills are indispensable.
“The lecture, presented to hundreds of students in a lecture theatre, is the standard
model of academic teaching” (Exley, Dennick, 2009). In their book “Giving a Lecture:
From Presenting to Teaching”, they described an informed and enthusiastic lecturer as
one that “should have had some basic training in lecturing and presentation skills and
should be competent to use a range of audio-visual aids” which means they “should be
able to structure and organize a lecture and have good time management awareness”.

In this sense, if the students who enroll in pre-service teacher education want to
become great lecturers in the future, they first have to perfect their presentation skills.
3. The components of an oral presentation:
An oral presentation, according to Finkelstein (2000), must get three components right,
that are: the content, the structure and the delivery. First, the content contains
information that people need (Clark, 2015), as quoted in Nguyen (2010). The content
should be relevance, logical, simple and clear. Avoid overloading the audience with
too much information. Next is the structure which provides a framework for the
presentation. The introduction gives the audience an overview of the issue and the
6


main ideas. The body includes the reasoning, evidence and explanation. The
conclusion is a summary of keys ideas. The last component of an oral presentation is
the delivery. Engaging the audience with eye contact and the overall energy is
important. The presenter needs to emphasize the main point with his or her voice and
know the amount of time needed to spend on them (Finkelstein, 2000).
The process of preparing and presenting an oral presentation can be divided into 4 key
stages: planning, preparing, practising and presenting (Monash University, 2021). In
the planning stage, the presenter analyses the audience (who they are, what they know
about the subject, how you can engage them), determine the purpose and select
effective information. When the presenter is done with planning, he or she can move
on to the preparation which involves structuring the presentation and selecting
appropriate supporting aids (pictures, videos, audios, etc.). Practising is the key to a
good delivery, it is not just about practising his or her speech but the body language as
well. Pratise several time, alound, standing up and time the presentation. Finally,
when giving an oral presentation, the presenter should make eye contact and speak
more slowly but clearly to provide emphasis.
4. The fear of presenting among students:
As stated in Ginkel, Gulikers, Biemans & Mulder’s research (2015), professionals

from several domains emphasize that graduates often lack the competence to speak in
public (Chan, 2011). In addition, public speaking is often described as the most
prevalent fear that individuals experience in social situations (Smith & Sodano, 2011).
Moreover, besides the essence of communicating in professional life, students
regularly underestimate the amount of time professionals spent on meetings and other
forms of communication (Morreale et al., 2000). Most students find it challenging
when asked to present orally, especially in English (Whai & Mei, 2016). It is stressful
for students who are not fluent in English and are expected to speak in the target
laguage (Khari & Nurul, 2010).
In addition, students’ anxiety negatively influences their performance (Brown &
Morrissey, 2004). According to Whai & Mei’s summary from previous researches
7


(Horwitz & Cope, 1986; Horwitz & Young, 2013; McCreary, 2006), some students
find that giving an oral presentation is a difficult task because of their “inner fears”.
They divided these anxiety into 3 categories: communication apprehension, test
anxiety and negative evaluation. “Students are afraid of making mistake, of being
criticized or rejected by the audience, and of forgetting what they want to say”. These
fears are known as communication apprehension. Text anxiety is “a fear of failing in
test situations”. And the fear of negative evaluation is “the apprehension and distress
arising from concerns about being judged despairingly or hostilely by others”. Beside
these psycological factors, linguistic factors such as lack of vocabulary, lack of
understanding of grammatical patterns and incorrect pronunciation and sociocultural
factors such as limited exposure to the target language and lack of opportunities to
practise are also obstacles for students to present in English class. As a results,
students feel embarrassed or stressed when they are required to present in front of the
class (Whai & Mei, 2016).
II -

LITERATURE REVIEW

The first and most related research to this study was conducted on the second-year English
majors at Dong Phuong University, Hanoi by Nguyen Thi Van Ha in 2010. According to
the researcher of this study, the levels of English proficiency of the students of English
Department at PDU are “generally various” and they “display a quite passive attitude in
learning” (p.15). The participants of this study, though are not English Teacher Education
majors, are closely relatable to those at Danang University of Foreign Language Studies as
despite being the major with the highest entry grade, the majority come from rural areas
(26/42) who had little or no chance to practice speaking skills in highschool. The aim of the
thesis is to find out the oral presentation difficulties perceived by the second-year majors of
English at PDU. To achieve this aim, the researcher employed survey research with the
participation of sixty two students of two classes, English Department, Phuong Dong
University. Specifically, she studied the issues: (1) the students’ perceptions about the
importance of oral presentation skills in their future work, (2) their evaluations of their own
presentation skills, (3) difficulties they encountered and (4) what they would like to be
done to overcome those difficulties. She used a questionaire to collect information from the
8


participants. For the 2 research questions that are related to this study about the difficulties
encountered by second-year students in giving oral presentations and the causes of these
difficulties, the findings show that most difficulties are found in delivery than in any other
aspects of oral presentations (delivering clearly with good pronunciation, confidently,
handling difficult questions, non-verbal communication, etc.). In terms of the causes, most
of the students’ difficulties came from their lack of confidence, low language proficiency
and inadequate feedback and assessment from teacher(s). These difficulties might result in
the students’ bad performance. Basing on the findings, the study has offered some
implications to help the students present in English more effectively such as improving
knowledge of the target language, setting up good speaking habits, building up confidence

and evaluating their own presentation with assistant from teachers and school.
The second research in this field focused on the difficulties in oral presentation as a form
of assessment. This research has the most similar participants out of 3 studies as they are
500 female EFL college students enrolled in a four-year pre-service teacher education
program in Kuwait, an Arab country. A five-point Likert Scale questionnaire was used. In
addition to the students’ point of view, an structured interview was carried out to solicit
instructors’ opinions. The researchers divided the causes into 3 categories: personal traits
(disliking oral presentations, anxiety from lack of self-confidence, fear of negative
evaluation, embarrassment), presentation skills (preference for reading from notes, the
inability to choose their own topics and keep within the time limit, lack of fluency,
grammar and vocabulary knowledge) and Audience & Instructor (fear of facing the
audience and instructor, fear of public speaking, harsh evaluation committee, previous
difficulties). The findings showed that students see “personal traits” as the most important
factor affecting their performance, while teachers see “oral presentation skills” as the most
important factor. However, due to the socio-cultural differences and its characteristic of
focusing only on the difficulties faced by students when giving oral presentation as a form
of assessment, the results of this study might not be true if applied to Vietnamese students
or oral presentations in general.
Last but not least, in 2016, a research by Whai and Mei was conducted on 223 students at
a polytechnic in Sarawak, Malaysia. The purpose were to identify the causes or oral
9


presentation difficulties encountered by these students and to examines the differences of
the causes between the engineering and commerce students. Although the participants of
this research were not related to English Teacher majors, they, too, are EFL learners and
the researchers used the questionnaire adapted from Nguyen’s research (2010) along with
an interview. Based on the results, the main cause of oral presentation difficulties faced by
students there was lack of practice, followed by psychological factors and linguistic
factors, and the lowest was the role of teachers. The results of this research, in some

aspects, were greatly affected by the choice of participants. “This may due to the fact that
they gave priority to their core subjects, namely, engineering and commerce subjects that
were challenging and required a lot of their time and effort to study” and “the students
might not be very interested as they assumed that oral presentations were not necessary in
their field of studies”.
In summary, out of the 3 researches, there was one that was conducted in Vietnamese
context (Nguyen, 2010), one proved the validity and reliability of Nguyen’s questionnaire
(Whai & Mei, 2016) and one that had the similiar participants (Nowreyah et al., 2015).

10


CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
1. Research design
To fullfill the objectives, the quanlitative methodology was utilized. 42 secondyear students of English Teacher Education major, Foreign Language Teacher Education
faculty, Danang University of Foreign Language Studies were requested to respond to a
questionnaire. The qualitative approach provided statistics on what troubles these students
have with giving oral presentations as well as the reasons behind these difficulties.
2. Participants and sampling
Danang University of Foreign Language Studies has 2 classes of Students of English
Teacher Education major. The participants for this research are 42 second-year students
from these 2 classes, of which 40 are female and 2 are male. The majority are aged twenty
(only one is 26). They all generally have intermediate level of English (B2 level) due to
the fact they had passed the entrance exam with a relatively high mark in English and are
currently at the third semesters at university.
3. Instruments
Questionnaire
The questionnaire sample is adapted from Nguyen’s research (2010) to fit the
objectives of this study. Specifically, the researcher took only part two and three of
Nguyen’s questionnaire sample that focus on and serve to answer the research questions

of this study about the students’ difficulties when giving presentations and the causes of
their difficulties. Questionnaire is more convenient for Vietnamese students since it is
confidential. This method can avoid embarrassment on the part of the respondents. They
have the time to consider the options and the result can be analyzed easily. The
questionnaire includes 2 parts. Part 1 consists of 37 four-point scale questions about the
difficulties and part 2 covers 9 True/Not true/Not sure questions about the causes.
The four-point scale includes:
 4 points for Very Difficult (VD)
 3 points for Difficult (D)
11


 2 points for Easy (E)
 1 point for Very Easy (VE)
For each of the 9 questions in part 2, the students have 3 options:
 True
 Not true
 Not sure
The questionnaire is written in English. The researcher was there to assist them by
explaining thoroughly the requirements and options.
4. Validity and reliability
According to Nguyen (2010), the draft questionnaire was an adaptation of a variety of
sources drawn from literature on the field of problems of learning English as a second
language. It was judged and commented by some teachers, who have expertise in the area,
and then piloted in some students. As quoted in Whai & Mei’s research (2016) which also
used the questionnaire adapted from Nguyen Thi Van Ha’s, “a reliability test was
conducted on the questionnaire and the Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient was 0.94”
(p.135), which indicated a high level of internal reliability. An Alpha value is considered
satisfactory if it is equal to or greater than 0.70 (Pawar & Thakurdesai, 2013).
5. Data collection

On the selected day, the group of 42 participants were requested to respond to the
questionnaire. All students participated in this survey on a voluntary basis. Before the
questionnaires were handed, the participants had been briefly explained about the set of
questions included. Their identity was kept confidential. This survey took about 5-7
minutes to complete. After that, the completed questionnaires were collected immediately.
6. Data analysis
In this study, the replies of the questionnaire were coded to change raw data to symbols
that can be tabulated and counted to compress responses given into a small number of
categories with information essential for analysis. The average scores (AS) for each item
is the total score gained by the whole group of respondents divides by 42 (the total
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number of respondents) (Nguyen, 2010). The average score indicates the level of
difficulty to each item in the list and it is interpreted as follows:
 3.6 – 4: Very difficult
 2.6 – 3.5: Difficult
 1.6 – 2.5: Easy
 1- 1.5: Very Easy
For the True/Not true/Not sure questions, the percentage (number of choosers divides
by 42) will indicate whether the majority of students consider that factor a cause of
their difficulties or not.

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