PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ VIEWS ABOUT THEIR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: AN ANALYSIS OF ESL STUDENTS' GROUP ORAL PRESENTATIONS AT TUMU COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, GHANA

Mahamud Wasila, Sefa Owusu

Abstract


Oral presentations are a major pedagogical activity recommended by the curriculum designers of the Bachelor of Education programme, which was implemented in 2018 in Ghana. In light of this, students are frequently called upon to work in groups and participate in oral group work. The study sought to find out the views of pre-service teachers of group oral presentations on their communicative competence and to assess the extent to which they exhibit communicative competence during group oral presentations. 112 third-year Bachelor of Education students at Tumu College of Education were purposively selected for the study. The questionnaire survey was responded to through Google Forms. The data was analyzed through SPSS, and the results were tabulated using percentages, mean and standard deviation. The study findings revealed that the group oral presentations created anxiety for students, though they proved to positively impact their language skills. Based on the students’ general acknowledgement of its positive impact they strongly endorsed the presentations as an important tool for language learning. The study further indicated that the students had knowledge of communicative competence as they rated themselves high in most competencies except a few areas, such as lack of confidence and not considering the socio-cultural background of colleagues during group presentations, among others. Hence, they needed more interactive instructional strategies that could help them boost their communicative competence.

 

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communicative competence, oral presentations, language anxiety, second language learning

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v9i3.5479

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