In-service EFL trainees’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment at Arba Minch university

Attitude to oral presentation and its assessment is highly crucial in the acquisition of effective presentation skills. This is particularly more evident for teachers as they communicate with their students’ every time. In connection to this, teachers’ attitude to oral presentation and its assessment, and the association between these two variables were found felt gap. Accordingly, this study attempted to fill the void taking 140 summer and regular in-service trainees of year I and II enrolled for their M.A degree in Teaching English as Foreign Language /TEFL/ at Arba Minch University between 2014-2016 academic years. In order to obtain the participants’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment, questionnaire and semi-structured interview questions were used. To analyze the trainees’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment, frequency counts and percentages were employed. So as to see the association between the trainees’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment, the mean scores of attitude to oral presentation and assessment scales were tested. To do this, two-tailed Pearson product-moment correlation was employed. On the other hand, the data acquired from semi-structured interview were thematically analyzed qualitatively as verbal description to supplement the data obtained from questionnaire. In addition, patterns of the analyzed interview data were compared and contrasted in order to see the link between trainees’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment if any. The findings indicated that EFL trainees have favorable attitude to both oral presentation and assessment of oral presentation. Furthermore, strong and significant positive correlation was found between EFL trainees’ attitude to oral presentation and assessment of oral presentation.