MAKING INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATION
INTERACTIVE AND LEARNER-CENTRED

TAM LIN WAI

Introduction

One of my main concerns in my teaching is to make all learning opportunities for students as interactive and learner-centered as possible. Individual presentation in my classroom was definitely an area where my concern was not being addressed. Initially, when I started doing individual presentation with the students, I conducted it as had many other teachers. The student making presentation would stand in front of the class while the rest were listening passively. The presenter was prompted to introduce his or her subject, and then I would ask him or her some questions on the subject to guide him/her to finish his/her speech. This was interactive for the student presenting, but definitely not for the rest of the class. During the presentation, the students were supposed to be learning how to deliver a speech to a group of peers and to be attentive members of an audience. I felt that neither of these desired outcomes was being effectively achieved: the presenting student was really talking only to himself/herself or the teacher, and the audience very quickly lost interest because they could only participate as passive observers. I wanted to change in a way that I only wanted to simply facilitate it instead.

The Process

The first step was to get students to ask the presenting student questions.During each presentation, the student presenting would introduce the subject and was given a chance to tell the audience somewhat about what they were sharing that day. Then I would prompt other students to ask a question of the presenter. When students asked a question for which the answer had already been given, the audience was reminded that each person had to listen carefully to the information given by the presenter so that they would be able to ask new and interesting questions.

For the second step, I encouraged the presenter to select the students from the audience to ask a question about his / her topic once he/she has finished his/her speech.

For the third step, to make sure students play a more active role, I gave each of them a score sheet with which they could assess the performance of the presenting student in making his/her speech. The presenting student could pick several students from the audience to give him/her some comments. Other students could also voluntarily give him/her some feedback.

The Results

I noticed a change in the students’ attentiveness during the presentation almost immediately. The students now had a reason to listen carefully to the presentation because they wanted to have a turn to ask and to be asked a question of the presenter. Most importantly, I observed them learning a number of things.

  1. The students had a much better understanding of how to ask a question. Originally, they repeated the suggested questions suggested by the teachers, but as time went on they began to make up new questions of their own.
  2. The students were learning presentation skills. They faced their audience, spoke out more clearly, and interacted with the audience by selecting students to ask questions.
  3. The students were learning how to be attentive as an audience, and listened quietly and closely to the presenter so they would know what questions to ask and what comments to give.

To prove that this format for Individual Presentation had generated students’ interest and learning, I went back to the old method for a few days. Obviously, the students in the audience became inattentive and bored, and the presenter was speaking quietly to the teacher. When we switched back to allowing the audience to participate, once again the students became interested in the activity.

As another way of interpreting the results of my "experiment," I asked the students individually what they liked about the Individual Presentation. Their responses were mostly "getting to choose students to ask a question" and "asking questions." When I asked them if they liked the "new way" or the "old way" better, all chose the new way

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Conclusions

Trying a more learner-centered approach to Individual Presentation definitely addressed my central concern about my teaching. Without a doubt, it improved my teaching in this area. This project benefited not only my students but also me and illustrated the importance for all teachers of continually evaluating all areas of our teaching.

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