Few activities in the ESL speaking class are as challenging for students as presentations. Giving one can be overwhelming because it involves so many different skills—from fluency, pronunciation, and grammar to clear organization and smooth delivery.
Giving a presentation online brings additional difficulties for students. Gestures must be smaller and eye contact is with the impersonal camera. In addition, some students have trouble with bandwidth or privacy at home, making a live presentation difficult.
And these online presentations are problematic in other ways. When students use slides, for example, they can spend as much time on graphic design as the actual presentation; additionally, with slides filling the screen, the student’s own image is so small that delivery skills are hard for the teacher to judge. With a large class, a long series of presentations can make it hard for other students to stay focused as they watch their peers. This is exacerbated because when presenting online, there is a greater temptation for students to read from a script off-camera, making presentations monotonous.
Here are six tips for more successful online presentations that address these challenges. Continue reading