1. Rationale
Nowadays, English is considered as an international language, which is spoken by millions of people all over the world. In reality, large international companies often use English to communicate between offices and subsidiaries. As for those people who are working, apart from using the language as a tool for oral communications, they have the desire to use it for their jobs. One of the desires is to present in English. As a matter of fact, giving an effective presentation requires a mastery of a broad range of skills and techniques. To achieve the objective of the presentation, the presenter is supposed to master techniques of identifying the purpose, topic, theme, organization so that the audience can easily follow the talk. In addition to that, the speaker’s use of intonation, articulation, stress, pacing, emphasis, etc., to get the audience’s attention and concentration is considered essential to contribute to his/her success.
As for the intermediate and advanced Vietnamese students of English, spoken English in general and presenting in English in particular is extremely important because they expect to use it frequently for their future work. Unfortunately, for many years, they have been good at recognizing the correct use of grammar and they can speak English but can hardly present in English. When many make oral presentations, they seem to pay more attention to lexis and grammatical structures than presentation style and presentation skills. This leads to the fact that not few learners of English after a long time learning English find themselves unable to deliver a presentation successfully.
Being a teacher who has taught English for more than seven years, I realize that my students, especially the second-year English-major ones, who as part of their studies have to make oral presentations, also share the same mandate. Many students seem to lack the skills and confidence to make effective presentations. They know the topics and the ideas are written down, but their presentations do not go well. This time their fellow students appear uninterested. Another time they might lose interest before the speakers have made half of the presentations or sometimes the speakers seem to be confused and embarrassed with the listeners’ questions.
The above-mentioned problems is the researcher’s primary concern and also the motivation for doing the thesis. The choice of “A Study on Oral Presentation Difficulties of Second-Year English-Majors of Phuong Dong University in the Speaking Lessons and Solutions” as the topic of this thesis, therefore, is not accidental.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
The study is aimed at oral presentation difficulties encountered by the second-year major students of English, English Department, Phuong Dong University And then some possible solutions are given to help my students overcome those difficulties so as to make an improvement in our teaching and learning oral presentations in general and speaking in particular. The specific objectives of the study are:
 To investigate the students’ perceptions about the importance of oral presentation skills in their future work
 To get to know their evaluations of their success
 To identify their major difficulties when presenting in English
 To examine the causes of their difficulties
 To give possible suggestions to improve their presentation skills