Extract

Abstract Purpose: To inform both the practice and the theory of teaching English presentation skills in tertiary education. Methods: Action research, quality cycles, triangulation. Findings and discussion: A functional model and a set of good practice guidelines for the teaching of English presentation skills were found and discussed. Evidence suggests that strong initial resistance to deep-learning intercultural concepts can be overcome, allowing students to adjust their presentation style to the long-term requirements of their international careers. Conclusion: The findings lend themselves to being extended in two directions: to a wider array of corporate cultures and to a wider array of business skills, enabling students to deal with intercultural variability in a broad range of business settings.

Keywords: presentations styles; CLIL/ICL; Four Cs framework; situated learning; intercultural competence

1.  Introduction

This case study describes the three-stage development of a module on English presentation skills at the Lucerne School of Business, a department of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (LUASA). In addition, the question is posed whether it is possible to derive good practice guidelines for the teaching of English presentations skills from the various modifications to the said module, giving this paper – more specifically – the form of a heuristic case study. Ultimately, the goal is to inform both the practice and the theory of tertiary-level language teaching in a business school context.

Informative-style and persuasive-style presentations

The starting point for this study on teaching English presentation skills...