The impact of the student-centered learning approach on dentistry students’ oral academic presentations

Abstract

Accurate and fluent speaking is required of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, and it can be developed inside and beyond the classroom. Implementation of a student-centered learning (SCL) approach assists students to become autonomous learners and trains them to communicate to a large audience in the English language without hesitation. The main purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the SCL approach and the strategies for structuring and delivering oral academic presentations among Dentistry students. This was done by observing the SCL approach among students who studied in the first and second semesters of Dentistry and grading them according to a five-point Likert scale - 1 being the lowest grade and 5 being the best grade. There were two groups, the control group, and the intervention 316group. The results were then subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS. Specifically, descriptive statistics, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, the ShapiroWilk test, and the Mann Whitney U. The findings show that the SCL approach has a positive effect on the Dentistry students’ oral academic presentation, the contents of the presentation, the presentation format, the presenting time, and the total score. Executing the SCL approach in the ESP context enhances learners’ communicative competences and develops their ability to structure and deliver presentations in a clearer and much simpler way. This approach assists EFL learners to integrate medical content with academic English.