To speak like an engineer: Communicative competence in technical oral presentations through the lens of students and industry practitioners

Abstract

Communicative competence remains an important skill expected of prospective graduates among employers. Despite its importance, this notion lacks clarity in its contextual definition. Such indefinite clarification has created apprehension among stakeholders like engineering students and industry practitioners' who are involved in the business workplace related oral communicative events such as technical oral presentations. In this study, engineering students are final year engineering students from the academic community who are involved in the delivery of final year technical project presentations. Industry practitioners, on the other hand, are professional engineers from the professional engineering community who have been selected to evaluate the students' final year engineering project presentations or technical oral presentations. Technical oral presentations constitute one of the many workplace related oral communicative events. Such concerns, as theoretically implied in the situated learning theory, if left unchecked, may result in the continued academia-industry practitioner discord over the said notion. The investigation is conducted to acknowledge the different interpretations of students and engineering practitioners in order to lessen the apparent academia-industry practitioner divide on communicative competence. The findings will discuss one of the sub-sets of communicative competence construct, i.e. presentations skills and attribute construct.

Estimation of Presentations Skills Based on Slides and Audio Features

“…In oral presentations, beyond the presenters' skill to transmit their ideas through verbal and non-verbal cues [5], it is well known the importance of using slides as a visual supporting material [16]. The objective of using slides is making presentations more structured and interesting to the audience [9].…”

Training on professional foreign language for students of engineering specialties: implementation of electronic technology

“…During communication in intercultural situations, even in case if its participants possess a common language code, there are always conflicts between knowledge and ignorance, between foreign and own. Consequently, the basic vector of modern linguo-didactic and methodical scientific researches should be directed on resolution of these conflicts [7][8][9][10][11].…”