Challenges and opportunities in EAP: Teaching PhD presentation skills

Expertise in Academic English Presentation Skills requires mastery of a specific skill set in the twenty first century. Giving an academic presentation involves the constant interplay between effective oral delivery, content organization and the successful use of presentation software. This article summarizes the main initial findings of ​a pilot study and the subsequent measures implemented on a course to teach specific Academic English Presentations Skills for PhD students. Our research explored how far specific learning strategies could be correlated with performance gain on the course, which was organised by the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department at Verona University for PhD students of the Human Sciences. Useful learner perceptions on the process were measured quantitatively and qualitatively by analysis of learner production and interviews. The study focused on perceived strengths and weakness in the learning process. The aim was to use these findings to inform the development of an effective framework for the teaching of such skills, which is missing, as has often been underlined in the literature (Ennis & Mikel Petrie 2020, Littlewood, 2014; Wette, 2018). The section of the study to be presented in this article focuses on the strategies adopted that led to effective performance gain and to present the task-based framework adopted on our courses as a result.