Oral presentations in international contexts: published advice, actual practice, problematic issues

In this paper, we describe the initial research and results of a project designed to investigate the literature and practice of oral presentations in international contexts, where the language of delivery is English and the presenters or members of the audience include nonnative speakers. Advice from books and journal articles on oral presentations, published in English or Japanese, was gathered and compared, and then contrasted with observations made on actual presentations by computer science faculty. The research revealed where similarities and differences exist among the publications, as well as where similarities and differences exist when compared to actual practice. General guidelines for making successful oral presentations were generated, along with a list of problematic issues, which require further investigation.