Vu Tien Thinh
International University, VNU-HCM
Tien Thinh Vu is head of the Testing board, coordinator of the ELT provision and vice chair of the Department of English, International University - Vietnam National University, HCMC. He received his Master of Arts in TESOL from the University of Canberra, Australia. He has 19 years’ experience in teaching general and academic English, ESP, international test preparation (TOEIC, TOEFL iBT, IELTS), Linguistics and TESOL courses and more than 11 years’ experience in the role of course/ program designer and developer, test center head, academic trainer and manager. His current research interests include applied methodologies, autonomy development and TELL.
Sessions
Teaching Presentation Skills Online: A Case Study
This study aimed to help improve students’ public speaking skills, which is a graduation requirement at International University. A total of 44 intermediate-level students were selected, and a mixed model with a pre-test, a post-test, and observation was applied. In addition to the lecturer’s input and tips, the experimental students benefited from cooperative learning and technology applications. Also, they were required to video-record their homework presentations and give feedback and suggestions on other presentations based on a checklist provided. Google Drive was recommended to give students easy access to sample presentations for reflections and self-improvement. After the eight-week treatment, results from the pre-test and post-test revealed that students in the experimental group achieved better scores on their presentations in terms of organization and visual aids and minor improvement in pronunciation, lexical usage, and grammatical usage. This sheds light on an alternative for teaching public speaking online.