Multilinguismo, CLIL e innovazione didattica - Libera Università di ...

Presenting presentations
audience finally gave up on this attempt. It is hoped that by teaching university
students the necessary skills to give good presentations then they will not
have problems in the future when they are called upon to present a project or
course.
2. Literature review
Widdowson (2003: 173) states that “in language teaching and testing our focus
of attention should be on the language as a resource of making meaning”. This
encourages us as practitioners to recall that the learners we are accompanying
on their language learning pathway need the language because they need to
make ‘meaning’; they need to communicate ideas. One setting which encourages
students to concentrate on their meaning is the field of oral presentations.
As language teachers we should not be spending all our time teaching
the rudiments of grammar (although this is important) because as, again,
Widdowson (2003: 174) says, “there is more to linguistic competence than a
knowledge of grammar, and more to language capability than linguistic
competence”. The second part of this again leads us into thinking that the
learners need to be capable users and in courses they need to be able to have
the chance to demonstrate that they are capable. This can be done in an oral
presentation.
There is a growing literature concerning oral presentations. Atkinson (2008),
Duarte (2008, 2010), Etherington (2009), Reynolds (2008, 2010, 2011) and
Williams (2010) all discuss how to design good presentations with or without
PowerPoint (PowerPoint is used here to refer to any of the slide software
programs available such as Keynote). Very often the main concern can be
summed up using Reynolds’ words ‘simplicity’, ‘naturalness’ and ‘elegance’
(2008: 107).
Harrington and LeBeau (2009: 5) divide a presentation into three parts: the
physical, the visual and the story. They justify this division by declaring: ”Not
all communication in a speech comes from words. The way you stand, where
you look, how you use your hands and vary your voice send a message as
well” so there is a physical part; “Speech is not just about what you say. What
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