HOMOGENEOUS AND HETEROGENEOUS GROUPING IN ENGLISH PRESENTATION SELF-EFFICACY DEVELOPMENT OF ESP STUDENTS

Abstract

Communication skills, including, in this case, presentation skills, are crucial for employability. Employers prefer individuals with good communication skills, as communication plays an essential role in the success of the individual employees and the company. For that purpose, the students taking English for specific purposes (ESP) in this study were trained to develop English presentation skills. This study compared English presentation self-efficacy development between students assigned to have homogeneous group presentation tasks (N=79) and heterogeneous group presentation tasks (N=73). The study adopted an experimental research design with a single research objective: To compare the effectiveness of homogeneous and heterogeneous group presentation tasks in enhancing ESP students’ English presentation self-efficacy. The data of the study were collected through a Likert-type ‘can-do’ presentation-self-efficacy questionnaire previously validated by exploratory factor analysis (EFA), which was administered before and after the interventions, which lasted for a semester. The data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS application. The study found that homogeneous group presentation tasks enhanced the ESP students’ presentation self-efficacy better, as the self-efficacy mean score of the group was higher than that of the heterogeneous group.