K12-PD Webinar 17: Presentation Skills: Are we teaching them correctly?

• Presentation description: 

Many English teachers employ an oral presentation component in their classrooms. This usually involves them teaching presentation skills to their students and often using them as a basis of assessment. However, in my research observations and personal experience, it seems that English

teachers (both native English speakers and local teachers) often adopt presentation models and styles that are inconsistent, outdated, or unsuited to the desired presentation format.

In this webinar, I will discuss and demonstrate a number of the features of teaching and/or performing oral presentations that are often overlooked or underappreciated, as well some that may no longer be as relevant as they once were.

The goal of this webinar is not only to provide teachers with clearer and more suitable parameters for teaching and evaluating English oral presentation skills but also to help Vietnamese teachers and academics who themselves present in English at conferences and seminars to appreciate and adopt some new presentation strategies. It is hoped that viewers will be actively involved in the discussions and that these might have an impact upon both their classrooms and their careers.

• Speaker bio: 

Michael Guest (MSc in Applied Linguistics, MDiv in Religious Studies) is a Canadian who has lived in Japan for over 30 years and spent 26 years as an Associate Professor of English in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Miyazaki. There, he specialized in teaching oral discourse skills to both medical students and in-service professionals. He is the author of the Springer book ‘Conferencing and Presentation Skills for Young Academics’ as well as the Japanese ‘Survival Presentation Skills for Japanese Doctors’, and was a feature writer on ELT matters in the national Daily Yomiuri newspaper for over 10 years. Guest has performed over 300 presentations worldwide, including seminars, workshops, and plenary speeches. Recently retired from his academic position, Guest now works as the director of MG English Consultants (www.mgenglishconsultants.com), an academic English aid service, where he continues to offer help to both students and working professionals for both research papers and conference presentations.