The multimodal aspects of oral presentation (OP) skills have been an important focus in studies on public speech and academic communication (e.g., Hood & Forey, 2005; Morell, 2015). However, within this body of research, there has been a lack of pedagogical perspective on how to teach these multimodal aspects. Moreover, most existing studies consider either the use of gesture (e.g., Carney, 2014; Masi, 2019) or the use of slides in OPs (e.g., Dubois, 1980; Rowley-Jolivet, 2004) separately. Meanwhile, Harrison (2021) posits that it is the interplay between speech, gestures, and slides in an OP that helps to maintain the audience’s attention and aid their comprehension. Building upon Harrison's work and other studies on multimodality in OPs, this pilot study analyses the speech-gesture-slide interplay in post-graduate students’ OPs. In this talk, we present preliminary findings from a qualitative analysis of a small corpus of student OP videos. Our participants are post-graduate students from different disciplines taking an academic communication course at a public university in South-East Asia. Having identified the specific ways students use such functions of speech-gesture-slide interplay as “draw attention”, “depict”, “decompose”, “disclose”, and “animate”, we draw on Goodwin’s (1995; 2000; 2014) framework to conclude that when presenting their research, students should strive to employ the different semiotic systems in a coherent way “so that they mutually elaborate each other in a way relevant to the accomplishment of the [communicative] actions” (Goodwin, 2014, p. 238). Other pedagogical recommendations for teaching multimodal aspects of OPs will also be discussed.

Authors:
Tetyana Smotrova, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Anita Toh, National University of Singapore, Singapore

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Tetyana Smotrova is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at National University of Singapore in Singapore

See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule

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