Oral presentation as authentic material for providing ESP instruction

Abstract

The paper investigates some perspectives of oral presentation as an authentic task for providing instruction to students who create their own presentations on a specified topic. For that purpose, undergraduate students who attend ESP courses were exposed to oral presentations prepared by their colleagues in order to be instructed on how to prepare their own presentations. Upon the task completion, a survey was conducted to collect the students’ opinions on the impact of the instruction that contains authentic material on their preparation strategies, self-regulation and self-evaluation in the process of fulfilling the task. The results show that oral presentation used as authentic material for ESP instruction positively affect the strategies and activities that students use during the preparation for the task completion. It also promotes students’ self-regulation and self-evaluation within the same process.