Tunisian EFL Learners’ Perceptions of the Use of Oral Presentations in Assessing Speaking Skills: An Exploratory Practice Study

The aim of this exploratory practice research was to gain a better understanding of how tertiary education English as a foreign language (EFL) learners perceive oral presentations (OPs) in the formative assessment of their speaking skills. Participants were 150 pre-service teachers of primary education from the Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Education of Gafsa (HISSEG), Tunisia. Data were collected through a questionnaire and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results revealed that participants showed a positive attitude towards oral presentation (OP) assessment, viewing it as useful in enhancing their speaking abilities and self-reflection and self-assessment skills. They also appreciated teacher feedback. In addition, they demonstrated a relatively high awareness of the purposes of OP assessment. However, participants had moderate awareness of the assessment criteria and low perception of peer feedback. Further interventions are needed to reinforce the strengths and address the inadequacies of OPs as a tool of formative assessment.


INTRODUCTION
In the Tunisian tertiary education context, a basic requirement for language courses and some academic subjects is that students are able to give oral presentations (OPs).Pedagogically, OPs can be used as a multi-faceted formative assessment task which includes teacher assessment, peer assessment and self-assessment.As student-centered and learning-oriented assessment tasks, OPs enable learners to assume an active role in learning by engaging in collaborative work and participating in self and peer assessment processes.OPs are normally given to a participating audience who provides feedback and engages in interaction and discussion.However, my own experience indicates that many students show a considerable degree of passiveness and reluctance about delivering OPs or engaging in the feedback session.This noticeable aversion to OPs could be due not only to factors such as the lack of linguistic competence or the fear of facing the audience but also to the students' concerns about the teachers' practices in assessing their OP skills.
Typically, the management of OPs is teachers' responsibility.The assessment criteria are also determined solely by teachers.In order to bridge the gap between teacher practices and student perceptions of these practices, it would seem necessary to allow learners to express their perceptions and to learn how they were being assessed.According to Allwright and Hanks (2009), student involvement in developing assessment tools "is important because it can give us their perceptions" and "it is perceptions that guide behavior, more than objective facts" (p.131).
The present exploratory practice study investigated students' perceptions of the effectiveness of oral presentations in assessing their verbal and non-verbal communication abilities and their role in the assessment process.The goal of the study was not to solve a problem but rather to reflect on teaching practices by understanding students' perceptions of the use of OPs in the formative assessment of their speaking skills.In addition, the study was motivated by my aspiration to become a more professional and principled practitioner of evidence-based teaching.

THE PUZZLE
For the last three years, as an EFL instructor in tertiary education, I have incorporated Oral Presentations (OPs) as an oral assessment task for undergraduate students who are training to become primary education teachers.Initially, my focus was on assessment rather than learning.However, I attempted to create a motivating and comfortable classroom environment in order to keep stress and anxiety to a minimum.I also tried to convince the students that OPs can help them, as prospective teachers, to improve their linguistic, communicative and teaching skills.Additionally, I told them that I would expect a successful OP to be as similar as possible to a micro-teaching lesson, with peers engaging in interesting classroom-like activities.A typical 20minute OP session would start with students giving their OPs using verbal and non-verbal communicative skills and topical knowledge to convey their intended message.After that, instead of giving them detailed and structured feedback, I would provide the presenters with an overall normative and holistic evaluation of their performance, ranging from unsatisfactory to excellent.Occasionally, if time allowed, I would urge peers to provide feedback but this was typically very subjective and biased.
Consequently, I noticed little improvement in the students' performance.The presenters remained uncertain about how to meet the teacher's expectations and viewed the teacher's feedback solely as a reflection of their grade.It was clear to me that rather than focusing on enhancing their linguistic and presentation skills, the students' primary concern was their grades.Furthermore, their peers were mostly passive and unable to provide objective, structured, and useful feedback.The presenters and their peers were sometimes disappointed by my assessment of their performance.It appeared that my expectations as a teacher and my students' understanding of the success criteria were incompatible.
In order to enhance my teaching and assessment practice using OPs, I conducted a comprehensive review of relevant literature on formative assessment and OP assessment.Drawing upon the works of Black and Wiliam (1998, 2009), Wiliam (2011), and others, I developed a principled approach for assessing OPs formatively and effectively.In the Black andWiliam (1998, 2009) framework, I discovered the importance of initially sharing the assessment intentions and purposes of OPs with students and the need to emphasize that the primary focus is on learning rather than receiving a grade.Moreover, I learned that it is crucial to design tasks that elicit optimal output as evidence of students' learning.Additionally, clear communication of the criteria for success would improve students' knowledge of the desired qualities for a successful presentation and enable them to better align their performance with the teacher's expectations.To facilitate objective peer feedback and self-assessment, students should be provided with a scoring rubric or a checklist.A five-minute discussion session after each presentation would also likely encourage students' active engagement and responsibility in assessing both their peers' and their own presentations.
With these strategies in mind, I set two goals for the OP assessment task: enhancing students' autonomy through self-regulation and self-reflection on their performance and enhancing their verbal and non-verbal communicative skills.The OP verbal skills would include pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and coherence, and the non-verbal skills would include facial expressions, eye contact, voice variation, and gestures.Then, I put all the aforementioned assessment strategies into practice with my first-year students during the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023.
During OP sessions, I conducted informal classroom observation to evaluate how the new assessment practices influenced student engagement and performance.Although I noticed some improvement in students' performance and feedback quality, I was still puzzled about how my students perceived these new assessment practices.In fact, I was eager to understand their perspectives and identify any areas that require improvement.

THE DATA
The data collection for the present study was guided by this question: How do EFL learners perceive OPs in the formative assessment of their speaking performance?
In order to explore the EFL learners' perceptions, several sub-questions were formulated: 1.What are students' perceptions of the learning purposes of OPs? 2. How do students perceive OPs as a source of evidence on learning?3. How do students perceive the assessment criteria of OPs? 4. How do students perceive teacher feedback? 5. How do students perceive peer feedback?6.To what extent do OPs enhance self-assessment and self-reflection?7. To what extent do OPs enhance students' speaking abilities?8. Which dimensions of the OP assessment task do students perceive as the most useful and least useful Data collection took place at the end of the first semester of the 2022-2023 academic year in The Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Education of Gafsa (HISSEG), Tunisia.

Participants
Table 1 gives the demographic information on the participants, representing about 40% of my first-year students.The participants (N=150) were pre-service primary education teachers and English, among other subjects, was a required subject in their studies.They were mostly under 20 years old (78.7%) and the majority was female (90%).All of them had been studying English for an average of 9 years at the time of the study.Their English proficiency level was around CEFR-B1.

Data Collection
To address the research questions, I employed a mixed-method approach that involved gathering quantitative and qualitative data.Because of my easy access to the students, I opted for garnering a wide range of responses.To explore students' perceptions of OP assessment, a fivepoint Likert scale questionnaire was designed.In addition, the questionnaire provides space for open-ended questions (see Appendix B).
The first part of the questionnaire contained basic background information about the participants such as age, gender, institution, major subject, and education level.The second part comprised 30 items representing seven variables: (1) learning purposes and intentions, (2) assessment criteria, (3) the usefulness of the Oral Presentation as a learning task (i.e. a source of evidence of learning), (4) the usefulness of teacher feedback, (5) the usefulness of peer feedback, (6) the usefulness of OPs in enhancing self-reflection and self-assessment, (7) and the usefulness of OPs in enhancing speaking abilities.For each statement, participants could select one of five options ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).Item responses were scored such that the higher the score, the more positive the participants' perceptions were about the use of OPs in the formative assessment of speaking.
The third part of the questionnaire consisted of three open-ended questions.The purpose of these questions was mainly to probe deeper into the reasons that may explain students' responses to the closed-ended questions; in other words, to better understand and complement the quantitative data results.Students were asked to answer the following open-ended questions: 1.
What else would you like to say about teacher feedback from your experience with oral presentations? 2.
What else would you like to say about peer feedback from your experience with oral presentations? 3.
What else would you like to say about what you have learned from your experience with oral presentations?

Procedure
The questionnaire was administered in the first week of December 2023 during regular English classes.I explained the aim of the study and the participants were handed a printed version of the questionnaire to be completed in the same class session.First, I demonstrated how to use the rating scale and explained that while completing the questionnaire, students were allowed to ask for clarification.The students then took approximately 15-25 minutes to complete the questionnaire.All participants were informed that the instrument was being used for research purposes and their responses would be treated confidentially.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The data were analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 24.0 software.Descriptive statistics were computed.For example, frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used to determine the participants' perceptions of the key elements of using OPs in the formative assessment of speaking abilities.
Only 30 students (20% of participants) responded to the questionnaire's open-ended questions.Their responses were analyzed according to the themes that are closely relevant to the study focal points: teacher feedback, peer feedback, self-assessment and self-reflection, and the usefulness of OPs in enhancing students' speaking abilities.These qualitative data were used to better understand and interpret the quantitative results of the questionnaire.
According to Pimentel (2019), the five-point Likert scale could be considered as an interval scale and he suggested a table to interpret the means in each interval.I used the same interval means and verbal descriptions to interpret the level of perception in each interval such that "strongly disagree" (M=1.00-1.79)corresponds to "highly negative perception" and "strongly agree" (M=4.20-5.00)corresponds to "highly positive perception" (see Table 2).

How Do Students Perceive the Learning Purposes of the OP Assessment Task?
The results shown in Table A1 (see Appendix A) about whether the teacher shares the learning intentions of the OP task with the students reveal that learners are moderately aware that the teacher uses OPs for both formative and summative purposes (i.e., learning and grading).By summating the strongly agree and agree responses, almost 64.6% of the participants perceive the OP task as intended for both learning and grading (item 4, M=3.9), and not for grading only (item 3, M=4.2).This could be interpreted that the OP assessment is regarded by students as learningoriented rather than grading-oriented.Similarly, the results revealed that about (63.4%) agree or strongly agree that the teacher had informed students beforehand about the immediate learning benefits of giving OPs in the classroom (item 1, M=3.8).Sharing learning intentions with students helped to establish clear expectations regarding what they were expected to learn or accomplish during OPs, which enhanced their focus and engagement.Responses to item 2 revealed highly positive perceptions of the long-term benefits of OPs in their future academic and professional career (item 2, M=4.4).This suggests that the OP task was authentic and closely related to the real-life target language use domain in which students would use the language outside the classroom.Overall, the results in Table 3 show that the students felt positively toward this practice (i.e.teacher's sharing the learning intentions of the OP task with students).

How Do Students Perceive the OP as an Elicitor of Evidence of Learning?
Items 5, 6 and 7 (see Appendix B) were intended to measure students' perceptions of OP as a learning task.In other words, the items gauged the extent to which the OP task elicited evidence of learning.The results shown in Table A2 (see Appendix A) indicate that OP was mostly used by the teacher to elicit students' verbal communication abilities (i.e., pronunciation, fluency, grammar and vocabulary), non-verbal skills (i.e., body language, eye contact, and vocal variety), and knowledge of content, in order of priority.About 83.3% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the presenters were assessed first on their verbal communication skills (83.3%, M=4.1), second on their non-verbal communication skills (73.4%, M=4.0), and third on their knowledge of content (70.6%, M=3.8).These results were expected because respondents were prospective primary school teachers who needed verbal and non-verbal skills in their future career rather than knowledge of content.

How Do Students Perceive the Assessment Criteria of OPs?
In their responses to items 8, 9, and 10 (see Table A3, Appendix A) about whether the teacher shares the assessment criteria of OPs with them, the respondents were moderately positive.The majority stated that the teacher informed them about the criteria of success (80.7%, M=4.2), the assessment criteria were clear and comprehensible (66%, M=3.7), and they were provided with a scoring rubric to evaluate OPs (62.6%, M=3.7).However, only 52.7% knew how the teacher evaluated their OPs (M=3.5).This shows that what students knew about the assessment criteria did not reflect the teacher's practice.In other words, while the students and the teacher seemingly were looking at the same assessment criteria, they used them differently when evaluating OPs.Despite using the same scoring rubric, what I noticed during the OP sessions was that students tended to evaluate OPs on a holistic basis, which focused on the product, whereas the teacher's evaluation was analytical and focused on the different aspects of performance including the process.This could be due to the students' lack of training in using scoring rubrics effectively in OP assessment.

How Do Students Perceive Teacher Feedback?
Data in Table A4 (see Appendix A) indicate a generally high positive perception of teacher feedback with regard to students' OPs.The teacher provided feedback about students' performance (85.4%, M=4.3), not only in terms of their strengths and weaknesses (65.3%, M=3.8) but also in terms of how to give better OPs in the future (i.e., feedforward) (82.6%, M=4.4).Pointing out what was inadequate and providing suggestions on how to improve students' performance was considered more important than the final grade.The quality of the teacher's feedback may explain the respondents' highly positive perception of teacher feedback compared to the final mark (78%, M=4.3).Students' responses to the first open-ended question in the questionnaire shed light on the reasons behind their highly positive perceptions of teacher feedback.

Teacher Feedback: Students' Responses to Open-Ended Question 1
Participants' recurrent responses around each theme are selected as representative of all similar responses and classified into "positive" and "negative" perceptions.
The first open-ended question pertained to the teacher's feedback on students' oral presentations.Corroborating and explaining the quantitative data findings, Table A5 (see Appendix A) shows that most students' perceptions were positive about teacher feedback.Respondents expressed their satisfaction with teacher feedback, noting that it was balanced, effective, and encouraging.Sample comments were that it "focuses on strengths and weaknesses", "it gives advice on how to do better next time", and it is "motivating".However, one of the few negative comments about teacher feedback suggests that it should include more details on how to improve one's OP (i.e.feedforward).This means that some students may need more detailed feedback or feedforward than others.Interestingly, another respondent suggested that the teacher should allow students to respond to teacher feedback.Student feedback on teacher feedback is significant because it empowers students as co-creators of meaning and improves the quality of the assessment process.
In sum, both quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that most students highly valued teacher feedback because it was objective, constructive, and motivating.

How Do Students Perceive Peer Feedback?
Results presented in Table A6 (see Appendix A) show a moderate level of positive perceptions about peer feedback.Though students had been informed how to give feedback prior to OPs (70%, M=3.9) and believed in the usefulness of peer feedback (64%, M=3.7),only 53.4% (M=3.5) of the respondents stated that they knew how to give useful feedback to their peers.Only 49.3% (M=3.4)perceived peer feedback as balanced (i.e., including strengths as well as weaknesses) and only 54.7% (M=3.5)took their peers' feedback into account when preparing for OPs.Respondents seemed to believe more in the quality and usefulness of teacher feedback than in peer feedback.Students' responses to open-ended question 2 revealed why they preferred teacher feedback to peer feedback.

Peer Feedback: Students' Responses to Open-Ended Question 2
The second open-ended question addressed participants' experiences with peer feedback in oral presentations.Table A7 (see Appendix A) indicates that perceptions towards peer feedback were mostly negative.This corroborates the quantitative results.Peer feedback was blamed for being biased and inaccurate.Some respondents commented that peers' praise of one another's OPs could boost self-confidence but lacked objectivity and usefulness, saying that it was "not clear," "not balanced," "not fair," or "useless."Peer feedback was also perceived as impressionistic, superficial, and focusing only on some aspects (e.g., games and fun in the OP) at the expense of others.This mostly negative perception of peer feedback could be due to students' lack of experience with OP assessment or to peers disregarding the assessment criteria and the scoring rubric when providing feedback.
To What Extent Do OPs Enhance Self-Assessment and Self-Reflection?
Table A8 in Appendix A shows that participants' perceptions of the usefulness of OPs in enhancing their self-reflection and self-assessment abilities were mostly highly positive.Students believed that teacher feedback and peer feedback had significantly improved their understanding of what would make a good OP (87.3%, M=4.4).More importantly, about 86% (M=4.3) of the respondents stated that OPs made them feel more responsible learners and more motivated to present again (80%, M=4.3).However, they did not feel very competent about giving successful presentations (63.4%, M=3.7) or evaluating their own OPs objectively (60%, M=3.7).Thus, although students had a highly positive perception of OP's potential of improving their selfassessment and self-reflection abilities, they needed more time and practice to develop a sense of autonomy as learners.

Self-Assessment and Self-Reflection: Students' Responses to Open-Ended Question 3
Students' responses to the question "What else would you like to say about what you have learned from your experience with oral presentations?" could be categorized into two main themes: the impact of OP assessment on students' self-assessment and self-reflections and the impact of OP assessment on students' speaking abilities.
The self-assessment and self-reflection theme received a considerable proportion of positive perceptions.Table A9 in Appendix A shows that OP assessment contributed significantly to students' self-reflection and self-regulation.By developing metacognitive strategies, students became more responsible in preparing and organizing their work as well as correcting and learning from their mistakes, a sign of self-regulation.Moreover, they started to develop the skill of self-evaluation, a fundamental prerequisite of learner autonomy.

To What Extent Do OPs Enhance Students' Speaking Abilities?
The last dimension of using OPs in the formative assessment of students' speaking skills is the impact of OPs on the presenters' speaking abilities.The results shown in Table A10 (see Appendix A) reveal a prevalence of highly positive perceptions of the impact of the OP task on students' speaking performance.Most respondents believed that OPs had improved their presentation skills (84%, M=4.3), their language skills (82%, M=4.2), and their self-confidence (87.3%, M=4.3), strongly believing they would do better in future presentations (90%, M=4.6).Interestingly, data also revealed that students' OPs had been useful learning resources for one another (73.4%,M=3.9), which represents one of the qualities of effective formative assessment.To sum up, students' perceptions revealed that the formative assessment of OPs had a significant positive impact on their speaking abilities and self-confidence.Students' responses to open-ended question 3 elaborated on how OPs enhanced their speaking abilities.

The Usefulness of OPs in Enhancing Students' Speaking Abilities: Students' Responses to Open-Ended Question 3
The second theme that emerged from responses to the third open-ended question "What else would you like to say about what you have learned from your experience with oral presentations?" is the usefulness of OPs in enhancing students' speaking abilities.Corroborating the quantitative data, the qualitative data indicate that respondents perceived OPs as very useful in enhancing their speaking abilities (see Table A11, Appendix A).OPs enhanced students' fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and coherence in speaking.In addition, students commented that they were more able to use body language and eye contact to keep the audience's interest.This improvement in verbal and nonverbal communication increased their self-esteem and selfconfidence as well as their social skills.

Which Dimensions of the OP Assessment Task Do Students Perceive as the Most Useful and Least Useful?
In order to have a clear view of students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the use of OPs in the formative assessment of their speaking abilities, I opted for ranking the different dimensions of the Likert scale in descending order.The purpose was to identify which practices were perceived as the most useful and which needed improvement.
Table 3 shows that the students' highest positive perception level is related to the usefulness of oral presentations in enhancing their speaking abilities (M=4.3,SD=0.8), followed by students' perceptions of the usefulness of teacher feedback (M=4.2,S.D=0.8).Ranking third are students' perceptions of the usefulness of oral presentations in enhancing students' selfreflection and self-assessment abilities (M=4.1,SD=0.73).What needs the most improvement is the students' perceptions of the oral presentation assessment criteria (M=3.8,SD=0.7) and students' perceptions of the usefulness of peer feedback (M=3.6,SD=0.7).This means that students needed a better understanding of the assessment criteria as well as more practice in using them for effective self-assessment and peer feedback.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
The major aim of the present exploratory practice study was to understand how EFL learners at The Higher Institute of Social Sciences and Education of Gafsa (HISSEG), Tunisia, perceived OPs in the formative assessment of their speaking performance.Specifically, what puzzled me was how my students perceived the recent changes in OP assessment practices and which areas would need reinforcement or improvement.
The analysis of quantitative and qualitative data demonstrated that respondents were generally satisfied with the usefulness of OP assessment in enhancing their speaking abilities and self-reflection and self-assessment skills, as well as the quality of teacher feedback.They also demonstrated a relatively high level of awareness of the purposes of OP assessment.However, their awareness of the assessment criteria was moderate and their perceptions of peer feedback ranked the lowest.
The findings of this exploratory practice study have several pedagogical implications for my future teaching practices, especially in using OPs in my formative assessment of students' speaking performance.First of all, it seems essential to conduct a discussion session with students to reach a shared understanding of the assessment criteria.The discussion should also emphasize the significance of providing objective and balanced peer feedback with reference to the criteria of success and scoring rubric.This could be achieved through observing authentic video-recorded models of OPs and evaluating them in the classroom using the scoring rubric.Additionally, it is important to address and alleviate social barriers that may hinder effective peer feedback, such as personal relationships or fear of threatening one another's self-esteem.One approach could involve assigning bonus marks or grades to students who provide the most valuable and objective feedback on their own or peers' performance.To further enhance student engagement in feedback sessions, they should be encouraged and motivated to comment on their teacher and peer feedback.Consequently, more time should be allocated to the OP feedback session.To put it succinctly, by ensuring a better alignment between teacher, peer, and selfassessment on the one hand and the assessment criteria on the other hand, learning will be promoted and learners' involvement in the formative assessment of OPs will be more effective and fruitful.
From the perspective of a practitioner researcher, a notable finding of this study is the value of exploratory practice research in gauging learning and gaining insight into the effectiveness of teaching and assessment practices.It is through the engagement in the constant cycle of observing, experimenting, and reflecting that a meaningful and principled change can take place.Positive Perceptions Negative Perceptions I learned how to prepare well for an OP I learned how to be organized in my work and how to be responsible I learned how to learn from my mistakes I learned how to evaluate myself and be self-confident I learned how to correct my pronunciation I learned that making language mistakes is not a problem because practice will help me correct them

TABLE A11 Students' Perceptions of the Usefulness of OPs in Enhancing Students' Speaking Abilities: Students' Responses to Open-Ended Question 3
Positive Perceptions Negative Perceptions I learned how to be self-confident and speak clearly I learned how to use body language and eye contact I learned how to attract the audience's attention and make them interested *OPs help me improve my self-esteem, presentation skills and social skills I think that when you prepare for an OP you learn new vocabulary and grammar I learned how to speak to the audience and organize my ideas 26 Giving oral presentations has improved my language skills: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc. 27 Giving oral presentations has improved my presentation skills: speaking to an audience, capturing their interest, using body language, organizing ideas, etc. 28 I have learned a lot from my peers' oral presentations.29 Giving oral presentations has improved my self-confidence.30 I think I will do better in my future presentations.Open-ended Questions 1.What else would you like to say about teacher's feedback from your experience with oral presentations?……………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… 2. What else would you like to say about peer feedback from your experience with oral