The effects of academic oral presentations on EFL students’ oral communication strategy use: an intervention study

This study examined the effects of academic oral presentations on the oral communication strategies used by students to deal with speaking problems in their target language. The study took place in an English Language Teaching department in which students’ native language (L1) was Turkish and target language was English (L2). Two groups of first-year students were assigned to the intervention and control groups, and a pre-test was administered to both groups. The students in the intervention group conducted 20–30 minutes of academic oral presentations in the target language, while the control group participated in traditional classes led by the lecturer for 12 weeks. After the intervention, a post-test was administered to both groups. The results showed that academic oral presentations contributed to the students’ oral communication strategy use in terms of total strategy, fluency-oriented strategies, accuracy-oriented strategies, and nonverbal strategies while speaking in the intervention group. Furthermore, it was found that there was a significant increase in sub-dimensions except for message reduction and alteration strategies, message abandonment strategies, and strategies for attempting to think in English in the post-test results of the intervention group. No significant difference was observed between the pre-test and post-test results in the control group.