literature review on presentation skills

Promoting Oral Presentation Skills Through Drama-Based Tasks with an Authentic Audience: A Longitudinal Study

• Regular Article
• Open access
• Published: 15 March 2021
• Volume 31 , pages 253–267, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Yow-jyy Joyce Lee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7786-446X 1 &
• Yeu-Ting Liu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8055-0587 2  

10k Accesses

4 Citations

Explore all metrics

Drama activities are reported to foster language learning, and may prepare learners for oral skills that mirror those used in real life. This year-long time series classroom-based quasi-experimental study followed a between-subjects design in which two classes of college EFL learners were exposed to two oral training conditions: (1) an experimental one in which drama-based training pedagogy was employed; and (2) the comparison one in which ordinary public speaking pedagogy was utilized. The experimental participants dramatized a picture book into a play, refined and rehearsed it for the classroom audience, and eventually performed it publicly as a theater production for community children. Diachronic comparisons of the participants’ oral presentation skills under the two conditions showed that a significant between-group difference began to become pronounced only after the experimental participants started to present for real-life audiences other than their classmates. This finding suggests that drama-mediated pedagogy effectively enhanced the experimental participants’ presentation performance and became more effective than the traditional approach only after a real-life audience was involved. In addition to the participants’ performance data, survey and retrospective protocols were utilized to shed light on how drama-based tasks targeting both classroom and authentic audiences influence college EFL learners’ presentation performance and their self-perceived oral presentation skills. Analysis of the survey and retrospective data indicated that the participants’ attention to three presentation skills—structure, audience adaptation and content—was significantly raised after their presentation involved a real-life audience. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications for drama for FL oral presentation instruction are discussed.

Similar content being viewed by others

Pretexts: Igniter Materials of Dramatic Elsewhere in EFL Classrooms

What’s the Story with Storytime?: An Examination of Preschool Teachers’ Drama-Based and Shared Reading Practices During Picturebook Read-Aloud

Annette C. Schmidt, Melissa Pierce-Rivera, … M. Adelaida Restrepo

Drama As a Learning Medium in Science Education

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

This study explores drama-based activities as a vehicle for real-world situations to train foreign language (FL) oral presentation skills in tertiary education. One of the most effective ways of learning a target language is to apply it in a real-life context. It has been repeatedly proven that students acquire a foreign language best when they have a real purpose for learning, and when their use of language is meaningful and authentic (Chamot, 2009 ; Enright et al., 1988 ; Long, 2015 ). In the case of oral performance, however, while practicing their oral skills, FL learners in the classroom tend to target their presentation assignment on their peers and the teacher, and the presentations generated under such circumstances are often shaped by a restricted array of purposes and audience, and confined to the classroom-based activities and cohort. This issue speaks to the need to design effective authentic tasks that can better prepare FL learners for real-world oral communication.

So, how do language instructors and scholars perceive the concept of authenticity? According to Celce-Murcia ( 2008 ), communicative value is a telling sign of authenticity. Authenticity in the language education literature is often discussed in terms of three aspects: authenticity in language, task and situation (Beatty, 2015 ; Breen, 1985 ). Unfortunately, due to the demands of test-driven curricula, authenticity is often not inherent in the language pedagogy in many second language (L2) and FL classrooms (Widdowson, 1990 ). In line with this trend, many teaching and practice tasks in the classroom focus mainly on pedagogical or remedial activities that aim to prepare students for tests rather than on tasks that genuinely engage students with real-world language, tasks and situations that are rich in communicative characteristics, such as purposefulness, reciprocity, synchronicity, and unpredictability (Beatty, 2015 ; Thornbury, 2010 ; see also Widdowson, 1990 ). Consequently, in many FL classrooms, authenticity in language, task, and situation becomes a challenge because the pedagogical context of the language classroom makes what goes on inherently inauthentic, and the pedagogy in the language classroom lacks the genuine communicative value found in the real-world context (Beatty, 2015 ). The benefit of using drama and theater production with a real-life audience is mainly investigated and established in the domain of writing; studies have shown that the inclusion of an online audience prompted foreign and second language learners to develop an enhanced audience awareness (Hung, 2011 ; Warschauer, 1999 ), improve their writing outputs (Pilkington et al., 2000 ), and become more confident in their writing abilities (Choi, 2008 ; Phinney, 1991 ).

Despite the positive evidence from these studies, whether similar benefits also hold true in the domain of public oral presentation skills—a deliberate act of presenting a topic to a live audience to influence, educate, communicate, or entertain—is yet to be investigated. Spanning two academic semesters, this longitudinal study set out to explore the diachronic impacts that drama-based tasks may have on college students’ oral presentation outcomes and on their perceptions of their presentation skills.

Literature Review

Using drama/theater as an effective means of promoting oral skills.

Drama provides an authentic arena for real language use in real situations with an emphasis on reciprocal, synchronized, unpredictable audience interactions (Beatty, 2015 ; Thornbury, 2010 ; see also Widdowson, 1990 ). First-language (L1) research has shown that drama has the pedagogical potency to enhance listening comprehension (Thompson & Rubin, 1996 ), reinforce the tie between thought and expression in writing (Dunn et al., 2013 ), offer paralanguage and suprasegmental cues to enhance speaking skills (Di Pietro, 1987 ; Kao & O’Neill, 1998 ; Miccoli, 2003 ; Whiteson, 1996 ), strengthen reading comprehension (Cornett, 2003 ), and even facilitate vocabulary acquisition (Rose, 1987 ). Among these benefits, drama is particularly conducive to the development of various oral skills (Whiteson, 1996 ). To make a strong case for this view, Podlozny ( 2000 ) conducted an extensive meta-analysis of 80 studies published since 1950 which investigated the impact of drama on oral language outcomes. This meta-analysis shows that classroom drama significantly facilitated oral language development.

In the realm of FL and L2 research, Kao et al. ( 2011 ) reported that in the process of building the drama context, FL learners had the chance to critically evaluate and practice their listening and speaking skills; they claimed that drama is a tool with the potential to engage English FL learners and promote their oral proficiency (see also Hwang et al., 2016 ). Recently, Zhang et al. ( 2019 ) found that the interactions among peers in the form of collaboration and discussion during a drama-based learning process significantly promoted young English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ storytelling skills.

The examples above illustrate that dramatic activities, if well-designed and well-handled, can significantly enhance various oral skills. Note, however, that not all studies have yielded unequivocal, positive evidence supporting this view. According to Lee et al.’s ( 2015 ) meta-analysis of 47 drama-based pedagogy (DBP) research studies, the mixed findings among existing studies may be attributed to the duration of drama-based language teaching/learning. Lee et al. thus posited that a “more positive effect [arising from DBP] will result when students experience [drama-based] interventions that include frequent…sessions that occur over [a] longer period compared [with] sessions [that are] infrequent or the intervention as a whole is brief” (Lee et al., 2015 , pp. 11–12). Specifically, while reviewing relevant works on drama-based language learning, Lee et al. observed that larger effect sizes and stronger effects were typically associated with studies “that span 12 weeks to a year or more” (Lee et al., 2015 , p. 38; see also Conard, 1992 for a similar view). However, many such studies are short-term projects, which usually span from 3 to 6 weeks (e.g., Hwang et al., 2016 ; Kao et al., 2011 ; Zhang et al., 2019 ). The above finding entails that oral presentation skills, which take time to develop, are more likely to be captured in longitudinal studies, and that the effects of drama-based language teaching on oratory or public speaking skills may be more manifest in long-term treatment that lasts at least 12 weeks. Hitherto, there has been a scarcity of longitudinal studies in drama-based language pedagogy (Stinson & Winston, 2011 ).

Furthermore, the relevant studies have focused predominantly on elementary school children (Andresen, 2005 ; Kelner, 2002 ; Mages, 2008 ; McCaslin, 1990 ). More studies that involve older, cognitively mature FL learners (such as teenagers and college students) are needed to gain further insights into the effects of drama-based activities on FL learners’ oral presentation skills. The current research is designed to investigate the longitudinal impacts of drama-based tasks on college EFL learners’ oral presentation skills.

The Importance of Involving a Real-Life Audience Beyond the Classroom Setting

More than 2 decades ago, drama and theater scholars began to stress the importance of involving authentic audiences beyond the classroom walls. For instance, Brook ( 1996 ) claimed that the existence of a live audience in an act of theater may be all that is needed to “see the varying lengths of attention [an actor] could command” (p. 52). Etchells commented that actors and an audience are two irreducible facts of theater (Etchells, 1999 ). However, empirical validation of the above stipulation has only started to accumulate during the past decade, mostly in the realm of L2 writing. L2 writing studies have revealed that the inclusion of (online) audiences outside the classroom walls prompts English as a foreign language (EFL) learners to develop an enhanced audience awareness (Hung, 2011 ; Warschauer, 1999 ), improve their writing outputs (Chen & Brown, 2012 ; Lin et al., 2014 ; Pilkington et al., 2000 ; Wang, 2015 ), enhance their motivation (Chen & Brown, 2012 ; Lin et al., 2016 ) and develop confidence in their writing abilities (Choi, 2008 ; Phinney, 1991 ).

Among the aforementioned studies, Chen and Brown’s ( 2012 ) study is a case in point. In their canonical study, six L2 learners were asked to complete three writing tasks for a specific, authentic audience, using two internet-based applications ( Wikispaces and Weekbly ). Analysis of these learners’ interview data revealed that they were all highly motivated to learn, and had significantly positive perceptions of their progress; notably, they were all driven to improve their sentence precision and complexity, and to enlarge their vocabulary knowledge. Nevertheless, the generalizability of Chen and Brown’s study was constrained due to the small sample size, and a strong case about the imperative role of an authentic audience cannot be made because of the lack of a comparison or control group. The above issues were later addressed by Lin et al. ( 2014 ) in whose study learners were exposed to two writing conditions: (1) the experimental condition: learners wrote daily blogs for an authentic audience; and (2) the comparison condition: learners wrote their journals in their notebooks using pen and paper (without an authentic audience). Diachronic cross-group comparisons indicated that although the two groups did not differ significantly in their attitudes, the experimental participants exhibited a greater improvement over time, and experienced less anxiety. This finding was later replicated in Wang’s ( 2015 ) and Lin et al.’s ( 2016 ) studies which introduced L2 learners to authentic audiences using the University Teacher-Student Blog (TSB) freely offered to them, and Facebook, respectively. Online audiences beyond the classroom setting also exert a positive influence on students’ communicative competence shown in video-based artifacts (Hafner & Miller, 2011 ; Yeh, 2018 ).

Despite the positive evidence supporting the pivotal role of an authentic audience in promoting L2 writing, this issue has not been examined in the context of L2 speaking where learners face qualitatively different challenges (e.g., having time pressure and requiring different parsing strategies) in planning and production. In spite of the absence of empirical evidence in L2 speaking, Casteleyn ( 2019 ) stipulated the pivotal role of involving a real audience in promoting L2 oral skills. According to Casteleyn’s recent study (Casteleyn, 2019 ) on theater performance, drama and theater play can effectively help language learners “live the experience” and promote their oral presentation skills in real life due to the following three features:

Systematic desensitization: Casteleyn believes that regularly conducted activities (i.e., drama/theater training and performance) have the potency to desensitize students’ speaking anxiety by allowing them to constantly explore and experience the target language in various meaningful, realistic contexts (Purcell-Gates et al., 2002 )

Skills training: Casteleyn contends that activities such as drama/theater share numerous elements (voice, face, body language, structure, script content, audience, etc.) that are parallel to the communicative activities in real life. Thus, drama/theater practice and performance can effectively prepare students to develop the oratory skills required for meaningful communicative activities beyond the classroom setting

Cognitive modification: Casteleyn posits that drama and theater productions provide students with opportunities to connect to a real-life audience other than their classmates. Performing drama for an audience beyond the classroom setting is a useful way of fostering students’ incentive to practice/perform, and hence to develop a positive mindset for public speaking and performance beyond the classroom setting

Casteleyn’s ( 2019 ) view regarding systematic desensitization and skills training is familiar to many FL or L2 teachers who employ drama in their classrooms, especially those proponents of task-based language teaching (TBLT) (see Ekiert et al., 2018 ). Note, however, that the third feature proposed by Casteleyn ( 2019 ), namely fostering a positive state of mind throughout the involvement of an audience beyond the classroom, has not been sufficiently validated either in the research on drama/theater or that on language education. Consequently, whether the involvement of an authentic audience is facilitative in promoting L2 speaking and presentation skills is yet to be investigated. Nielsen ( 2015 ) argued that classroom tasks should transcend the school walls and involve an authentic audience other than their classmates, because this would give students an opportunity to immediately and clearly see the meaning of their work (Purcell-Gates et al., 2002 ). However, in the field of FL education, in particular with regard to the courses that prepare students for public speaking skills, the construct of an audience is often conveniently used to refer to the instructor or students’ classmates; the adoption of an extramural live audience for real-life meaningful tasks is seldom seen.

Research Questions

This study intended to establish that authentic activities that are designed and regularly implemented in consideration of the aforementioned three features noted by Casteleyn ( 2019 ) will equip students with the kind of mindset and oral presentation skills that are key to the success of communicative FL oral activities outside the classroom. To establish the above contention, this study incorporated drama-based activities into the teaching of FL presentation skills, and explored whether such a course design would enhance college students’ FL presentation skills as well as their self-perceived competence. Two research questions were explored:

Do drama-based tasks implemented with classroom and real-life audiences differentially promote learners’ FL oral presentation performance?

Do drama-based tasks implemented with classroom and real-life audiences differentially enhance learners’ self-perceived FL oral presentation performance?

Participants

This research spanned two consecutive semesters. It involved two presentation classes from an Applied English department in a Taiwanese university. The two classes consisted of 20 and 22 students, respectively, with one of them experiencing the drama-based teaching method (the experimental group) and the other going through a traditional (no-drama) presentation training (the comparison group). Irrespective of differences in training methods, the two classes each met for 2 h per week, 18 weeks a semester with the aim of helping the students acquire verbal and nonverbal presentation skills so as to present their ideas to an audience clearly, logically and comfortably. The instructor-as-researcher developed class activities within the domain of an oral discourse training class based on her specialty so as to achieve the aforementioned class goal. By comparing two groups of students using two different teaching methods, the researcher hoped to investigate which method promoted better oral outcomes, and whether there was a difference in the intended learning gains—a practice also seen in other classroom-based research (e.g., Wacha & Liu, 2017 ).

An IRB approval was obtained prior to the study. The study strictly adhered to the ethical procedures approved and prescribed by the IRB. All participants had sufficient time to review the content and syllabi of the two classes under investigation. Importantly, they could decide if they would allow the researcher to analyze their data; while going over the syllabi in the first meeting, the instructor clearly informed them of the grading criteria, and explicitly told them that whether or not they decided to be a part of the study would not have any impact on their grades. All class activities—including the ones used in the experimental or comparison groups—are pedagogical possibilities that instructors could imagine seeing in an oral-based class. In this study, all students voluntarily agreed to participate and express their interest in knowing the result of this study.

Before the research, all participants had studied EFL for 8–12 years, and all were third-year college students admitted to the same department at the same university in Taiwan through standardized national examinations set at level B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001 ). In their senior high school and college life, they had received training emphasizing English as the target FL. Importantly, they had similar weekly exposure to the target language, as gleaned from a screening survey administered prior to the onset of this study. Before they came to this class, they had not received formal training in oral presentation. Before the study began, all participants had to make a presentation. To avoid rating bias, two public speaking professionals who did not know the participants were invited to rate the participants’ performance on the presentation. Importantly, to enhance the validity of the two professionals’ ratings, the participants’ presentation recordings produced before and after the study were blindly presented to and scored by the two professionals without any time labels (such as pre- and/or post-study speech samples). The raters had no other interaction with the class and did not know the student participants personally. An independent t test ensured that no significant differences [ t (40) = − 0.65, p  = 0.517] in the initial levels of oral presentation performance existed between the comparison and experimental groups. Additionally, the two groups’ self-perceptions of the six presentation techniques under investigation (i.e., structure, audience adaptation, speech content, posture, nonverbal delivery, visual aid handling) were not significantly different, showing skills homogeneity for the two groups of students at the beginning of the study.

This research was a time-series classroom-based quasi-experimental study, recruiting students from two intact classes (see Rogers & Révész, 2020 ) and assigning them to the experimental condition (involving the drama-mediated treatment) and the comparison condition (involving the non-drama-mediated treatment consisting of ordinary public speaking training). Following the protocol of this type of research, the researcher collected the participants’ language samples assigned to these two conditions through multiple observations and made pairwise comparisons over a set period of time; as such it “allow[s] insight into the time course of language development, including changes that may be immediate, gradual, delayed, incubated, or residual…as well as the permanency of any effects resulting from a treatment” (p. 6). Addressing such a research method, Sato and Loewen ( 2019 ) noted that classroom-based quasi-experimental studies “[provide] learners with interventions that were seamlessly deployed in the genuine classroom contexts which permitted the examination of authentic classroom instruction with minimal disturbance” (p. 31). In this study, the comparison class received a standard regimen of presentation practice with lectures as supplemental sections; the experimental class received drama-based presentation practice, also with lectures as supplemental sections. The dependent variables under investigation were oral performance and six self-perceived presentation techniques (i.e., structure, audience adaptation, speech content, posture, nonverbal delivery, visual aid handling). Drama-based activities were the independent variable. The research design is summarized in Fig.  1 .

Flow chart of the research design

The Experimental Group

In the first semester, the experimental students practiced dramatic tasks that emphasized specific drama and oral presentation elements, while in the second semester they put their skills together for the production of a complete play for an outside-the-classroom audience. The experimental group treatment is described in more detail below.

At the beginning of the class, students in the experimental group were informed in advance that they needed to turn picture books in their mother tongue (Chinese) into cohesive scripted plays in English, and perform them for children from the neighborhood community. The students had to work in teams throughout the two-semester time span, each exploring and dramatizing a selected picture book under the scaffold and guidance of the instructor from each weekly meeting session. Created by Taiwanese writers and illustrators, all the picture books were written for children in Chinese. They were mostly fantasy, realistic fiction, and fables, ranging from 30 to 40 pages, with themes of friendship, sharing, family, love, or respecting differences—issues highly relevant to the life of the participants of this study. Chinese picture books were deliberately chosen so that the participating students worked on the English translation to create authentic lines from the original Chinese source materials rather than relying on readily available texts from English picture books. To this end, the experimental group received a series of drama-based tasks designed according to the principle of task dependency (Nunan, 2004 ), meaning one task building upon the preceding tasks. Specifically, the tasks for the experimental group were divided into two inter-related stages in the two semesters: (1) drama-based treatment, and (2) enactment of a theatrical play. During the first stage, the students were led to experience a series of drama-based tasks that were designed to incrementally foster their oratory skills and sensitivity to the six key elements of drama proposed by Aristotle ( 1984 ), namely, theme, plot, character, language/diction, music, and spectacle (see below for more details).

During the second stage of the treatment, while continuing building and polishing their team-scripted play, the students had to turn the play into a task of story theater, that is, a team production to be performed outside the classroom with community children as the authentic audience. While the time length and the story titles were pre-determined by the teacher, students were given extensive flexibility to extend the theme of the picture book and to work on the English translation of the lines from the original source materials in Chinese, the plot, dialogue production, character depiction, stage props, and the procedures of the play.

It is also worth noting that the first stage (drama-based treatment) primarily aims to attain “systematic desensitization” and “skill training”—the first two features for effective use of drama prescribed by Casteleyn ( 2019 ) through regularly conducted drama/theater training and performance within the classroom. Next, the second stage continued enhancing “systematic desensitization” and “skill training” by enacting a theatrical play. Importantly, the second stage attempted to foster a positive state of mind through the involvement of an audience beyond the classroom (cognitive modification)—the third feature prescribed by Casteleyn. The ensuing paragraphs will first detail how the drama-based treatment that took place in the first semester collectively and systematically equipped the students with the skill and competence that are key to the success of the second stage, namely enactment of a theatrical play.

First Stage: Drama-Based Treatment

During the first semester, the students were led to experience a variety of drama-based tasks, including storytelling, role play, character review, monologue, and play rehearsal in the classroom, which aimed to help the students think more deeply about the language and acting elements of their play production and characters. Details of these drama-based tasks, which aimed at fostering the aforementioned six drama elements proposed by Aristotle, are offered below:

Storytelling: each student chose or created a character in the story and told what happened in the story from his or her character’s point of view. This activity prompted the team to develop the plot of their final play production

Character review: each student made a self-introduction of his/her character’s part. In order to do so, the student must use imagination to consider onstage and offstage details about the character, such as age, physical attributes, personality characteristics, childhood, family history, education/work experience, habits, recreations, likes and dislikes, dreams, etc. This activity prompted the experimental group participants to make their characters come to life with a fuller form in the final play production

Monologue: each student chose a significant event in the story and commented on it from his or her character’s viewpoint. In order to do so, the student had to take into consideration the character’s personality traits and psychological state during that event. This activity prompted the experimental participants to develop the language/diction/dialogues of the characters in the final play production

Dress rehearsal: after becoming familiar with the plot, characters and language, the participants as a team made up more dialogues to fit the action and events of the story. They also designed stage props, costumes and visual effects, which corresponded to Aristotle’s dramatic element of spectacle. In addition, they had to produce sound effects and music for their story, which were equivalent to the dramatic element of music. Then the team acted out the story in a dress rehearsal. Afterwards the team sought feedback from the class and the teacher for production improvement. Additionally, the students constantly received comments from the instructor and their peers, and had their syntax, grammar, and phonology corrected in the classroom. It should be noted that up to this point the four drama-based tasks took place in the classroom.

Second Stage: Enactment of a Theatrical Play

Story theater: five teams produced five scripted plays, now all complete with the six elements of drama. They were publicly performed as a series of five theater productions for children in the local community; additionally, the children’s parents were also in the audience. During their performance, the students were encouraged to interact with the audience, either verbally or non-verbally, whenever possible and appropriate.

The Comparison Group

The comparison group did not receive any drama-based treatment. Instead, the group received a series of lectures on presentation skills, and were led to experience corresponding oral presentation practices during the two semesters (Fig.  1 ). They spent the same amount of activity time as that of the experimental group. The practice presentations, listed as follows, were designed to correspond to the nature of the tasks done by the experimental group:

A speech on what happened in the summer vacation [storytelling]

Self-introduction [character review]

A speech to comment on something the student felt strongly about [monologue]

A speech with interactions with the class audience [dress rehearsal]

A speech requiring interaction with the class audience [story theater]

Instruments

Two quantitative measures were used in this study: professional rater judgement and the self-perceived presentation techniques questionnaire (SPPTQ). While the former was used to answer research question#1, the latter was employed to address research question#2. Both the professional ratings and the results of the questionnaire were analyzed using the independent t test. A qualitative measure (i.e., post-study interview) was conducted to substantiate the findings of the quantitative measures.

Quantitative Measures

Professional raters’ judgment: throughout the study, which lasted for an academic year, all participants were tested on oral presentation at the beginning of the research, at the end of the first semester, and at the end of the second semester; the three presentations involved students making three informative speeches that were comparable in terms of length and difficulty level. The three presentation grades served as the pre-test, first post-test, and second post-test of oral presentation performance. Two professors who were public speaking experts rated the participants’ performances using the same grading guidelines on ten items: voice volume, speed, intonation, pronunciation, posture, gesture, eye contact, speech structure, language use, and material choice. Each item scored 10 points, making the total of a presentation 100 points. The inter-rater reliability of the two raters was 0.92. The two raters rated all the pre- and post-test presentations. The average of the two raters’ scores on the presentation performance was taken to represent the achievement score of that particular presentation.

The self-perceived presentation techniques questionnaire: the self-perceived presentation techniques questionnaire (SPPTQ), a 5-point Likert scale, was used to assess the participants’ perceptions of their own verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors in English presentation. It comprised 23 items, which gauged the skills on six dimensions: voice, facial expression, gesture, speech structure, speech content, and audience orientation. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability of the questionnaire was 0.922. The questionnaire was administered to both the experimental and comparison groups three times for their responses on the levels of their self-perceived presentation techniques: at the beginning of the research, at the end of the first semester, and at the end of the second semester, respectively.

Qualitative Measure

A post-study interview was administered to the members of the experimental group to elicit their qualitative feedback and reflection regarding their experience. The purpose was to produce qualitative information to substantiate how the experimental group students perceived the impacts of the drama-based tasks on their presentation learning. Feedback questions were adopted from Chen and Brown ( 2012 ) with necessary modification of the subject of inquiry from writing to presentation. In order to elicit in-depth thoughts and more responses, the participants were free to use Mandarin Chinese, their mother tongue, for reflection.

Data coding were conducted by the two raters, who constantly double-checked with each other, making sure both agreed with each other in the first round of data previewing. Rating alignment was then established. During the task of data sorting, recurring learner comments and opinions were identified according to principles of thematic data analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). Throughout the process of categorizing the data into themes and key points, the two raters frequently met with each other to discuss and resolve coding differences, and reached consensus on theme categorization as well as key-point extraction through discussion. The inter-rater reliability was 0.85.

The results and relevant discussion vis-à-vis the two research questions are reported below.

Quantitative Results

RQ1: do drama-based tasks implemented with classroom and real-life audiences differentially promote learners’ FL oral presentation performance?

To understand the learners’ progress in presentation performance, the presentation scores of the first and second post-tests by the experimental and comparison groups are presented respectively in Table 1 . Table 1 summarizes the statistical results of independent t tests in the two stages of the drama-based tasks. The p value [ t (40) = − 0.152, p  = 0.880] of the first post-test scores indicated that after engaging in drama-based exercises in the classroom at the end of the first semester of drama-based tasks, the presentation performance of the experimental group did not differ significantly from that of the comparison group, which performed non-drama exercises for practicing EFL presentation. That is, the two approaches had comparable impact on participants at the end of the first semester.

However, the p value [ t (40) = 2.061, p  = 0.046] from the second post-test scores of the two groups at the end of the second semester of the study, that is, applying the extramural drama activities to the experimental group, showed that the presentation performance of the experimental group differed significantly from that of the comparison group. The statistics showed that after practicing and conducting the dramatic play to the child audience, the experimental group performed significantly better in terms of oral presentation, with significantly smaller variation in means (as gleaned from the smaller SD value, 7.001). This further indicates that the drama-based treatment—especially the one that involves an audience beyond the classroom setting—was probably more effective in terms of reducing inter-learner variation than the traditional oral training.

RQ2: do drama-based tasks implemented with classroom and real-life audiences differentially enhance learners’ self-perceived FL oral presentation performance?

Tables 2 and 3 summarize the statistics by independent t tests of six presentation techniques perceived by the experimental and comparison groups in the two stages of the drama-based tasks. The p values of the first post-test scores across all of the six self-perceived presentation techniques in Table 2 showed that they were all larger than 0.05. This indicated that after conducting drama-based tasks at the end of the first semester, the self-perception of all of the six presentation techniques held by the experimental group did not differ significantly from that by the comparison group, which did not receive drama-based tasks for practicing L2 English presentation.

However, in Table 3 the p values obtained at the end of the second semester show that for three of the presentation techniques, that is, structure/organization technique, audience sensitivity, and speech content, the differences in the self-perceived scores were large enough to register as significant, with p values less than 0.05. Thus, they differed significantly from their counterparts in the comparison group after presenting the drama to the audience.

Qualitative Results

Affective gains.

The ensuing paragraphs report the analysis of qualitative data from the experimental group. Achievements reported statistically can be further highlighted by some contextual knowledge of the affective perspectives of the participants regarding their experiences. Attention to these affective conditions sheds light on the agents’ perceptions of their own progress and performance. Four themes, (1) task authenticity, (2) task meaningfulness, (3) teamwork and friendship, and (4) enhanced presentation performance, were frequently mentioned in the post-study interviews.

Task authenticity The experimental group experienced an authentic oral presentation task during the second semester theatrical production, where there was a clear relationship to the real world with authentic purposes and authentic language (Skehan, 1998 ). All the participants were deeply impressed by the task authenticity they experienced from the reciprocal, synchronized, unpredictable audience interactions (Beatty, 2015 ; Thornbury, 2010 ; see also Widdowson, 1990 ) and the pressure these elements created for the performers to respond effectively. During the second semester, they had to present the play for an audience other than their classmates. This was an experience not available during the first semester, and it generated different feelings. Some participants expressed how they felt as follows:

We would find a vacant classroom and rehearse, without an audience of course, so we did not feel pressured. We could always rewind to where we went wrong. But not for the real performance. In a real performance, you only get one chance and you have to do the best you can to make it a success. (Participant 4E) During rehearsals, we did not feel any differences. To me they were just like normal presentation practices—very normal. But during the performance for children, we felt like we had no control and were totally at the disposal of others. There was no going back if we did anything wrong. Our state of mind was totally different. (Participant 2E)

Past research pointed out that it is effective to improve learners’ linguistic and communicative ability through authentic tasks (Ellis, 2000 ; Kiernan & Aizawa, 2004 ; Nunan, 2004 ; Willis, 1996 ). The results of the current study suggest that students’ oral presentation skills might be further developed by the authenticity inherent in the experience of a theatrical production.

Task meaningfulness From the theatrical production, the participants saw their skills being used to create something meaningful. In the process of accomplishing the drama task, they came to understand its importance, and they felt a great sense of achievement. The team members in the experimental group realized that they played critical roles in the play production and had the power to shape the scenes. They were entrusted with the responsibility to teach children English in an educational and fun way via an English play production. They had the sense that their ideas were important and would be listened to by the audience. During the theatrical performances, they deeply appreciated that they could make a difference to the pupils.

I was really moved by the fact that the kids enjoyed our show sang and danced with us, and their parents also sang and danced with us too! After our show, they also gave me great feedback and supportive comments. I was truly moved and felt that all the efforts were worthwhile. (Participant 14E)

I was fully rewarded by the satisfied smiles of the children and the positive feedback from their parents. I felt that all the efforts paid off. (Participant 11E)

It is reported that meaningful contexts promote language skill acquisition (Lyster & Sato, 2013 ). Participants’ acknowledgement of the meaningfulness of a theatrical task as a learning opportunity in this study agreed with these previous research findings.

[I] truly feel that it was great to engage in this activity. It’s a very nice experience. (Participant 12E)

I think it is really wonderful for a course to offer such an opportunity of putting on a theatrical show like this. (Participant 17E)

Teamwork and friendship One of the most important lessons the experimental group learned was the importance of teamwork. The phrase “A team can achieve much more than a single individual” was mentioned again and again. Without a doubt, this illustrated that the drama-based project developed teamwork. The theatrical performance helped the students appreciate the benefit of working cooperatively with a group. They learned that teamwork was required in every link of the team project, from props production, skit writing, props transportation, to collaboration in the play production. Each teammate made his/her unique contribution to the success of the drama project. Comments from the experimental group supported that the theatrical project could be used to build a sense of community in a team.

We made props together; we discussed the play script together; we rehearsed together; we coordinated with each to make our play production as good as it could be. Our comradeship grew and our friendship became better. (Participant 12E)

I learned that team members must coordinate with each other to achieve the common goals, which an individual alone cannot do. (Participant 3E)

Authentic tasks require collaborative problem-solving during the process and during the interaction with peers (Ellis, 2000 ; Kiernan & Aizawa, 2004 ; Nunan, 2004 ; Willis, 1996 ). Notably, enhanced collaboration was primarily reported from those participants in the experimental group. As the course went on, the mutual understanding and trust grew deeper among the team members. Because the drama-based task requires open, regular communication among the participants, they developed a bond and the ability to rely on each other when extemporaneous reactions must be taken to handle on-site contingencies from the audience. Tacit understanding of each other made the show resistant to unplanned disruptions.

I learned the importance of interactions with partners. I used to prefer completing assignments alone. After this task, I learned the importance and benefits of teamwork. Solidarity among members made me happy, and the power it brought made me feel that I will not dread obstacles because I have partners to help solve the problems. (Participant 8E)

Enhanced presentation performance An overwhelming proportion (91%) of the experimental participants testified at the post-study interviews that their presentation improved significantly after the drama-based activities involved real-life audiences. Compared to their predispositions at the beginning of the class, the participants indicated that during the second semester, they became more aware of the importance of liveliness required in presentations for a real-life audience; they were also more aware of their presentation performance and related skills and were able and willing to critique themselves. Such meta-cognition is important in learning for any progress to be made in the future. Many of them attributed the cause to the authentic theatrical task in the second semester. Some of the excerpts from the participants highlighted this theme:

Now, when I present in English, I become more expressive, unlike the monotonous and dry memorization before. (Participant 5E)

My stage presence and oral ability are better than before, as I used this opportunity [dramatic play in public] to push myself to practice over and over, and I have developed a habit of constantly paying attention to and correcting my pronunciation. (Participant 4E)

After the play production, I can maintain a pleasant facial expression, I can speak more fluently, and I do not get as nervous as before. (Participant 3E)

Before the play production, I could not speak in English fluently. Practice certainly made a lot of difference. It is true that by speaking English often, you can remember and recount things [in English] more naturally. (Participant 2E)

At the beginning of the class, whenever I faced a presentation, I often did not know how to report my content. However, by this theatrical production, I think my presentation ability has made some progress. (Participant 19E)

Gains in Self-Perceived Presentation Techniques

The participants’ qualitative reports on their enhanced presentation performance are particularly relevant to three elements of the SPPTQ survey on self-perceived presentation techniques, namely structure, content, and audience.

Structure The team members needed to discuss how to develop their storylines and put together a unified drama performance. This process involved proposing new ideas about the plot, activities, and how to organize them, which heightened their creative ability and structuring skills. One student described the process of planning the theatrical play in detail. As seen from the quote below, the participants’ comments revealed that the development of dramatic structures provides useful training for properly organizing a speech.

The first time I read through the picture book, I immediately remembered every single part of the plot. Then I started to prepare for the first presentation assignment assigned by the teacher—telling the story and summarizing the plot. Next was the midterm presentation—my character’s monologue. The two assignments made me all the more aware of every link and detail in the story, plus possible scenarios that my character might encounter, all devised by myself! I consulted with my team members. We incorporated all the add-on plot points that we could think of into our dramatic play and finalized our lines in the script. During the process our team discussed all the links in the play, although there were still some conflicting ones when we rehearsed in class. Nevertheless, thanks to the valuable feedback from the teacher and the classmates, we brainstormed even more plot points for our play! (Participant 18E)

Not only did the year-long process prompt the participants to notice the importance of plot structure and enable them to polish it, but it also heightened their awareness of speech structure which extended to other learning subjects.

After rehearsing so many times, there was virtually no problem with the major structure and procedure of the play. They were all smoothed out. (Participant 15E)

The biggest difference that happened for me [before and after] is the precision of language and attention to grammar. After all, I was giving a performance to children on behalf of my Department, so I must be careful about every word I said. This mentality also prompted me to pay extra attention to logic whenever I communicate in Chinese or English instead of treating communication lightly. (Participant 15E)

It should be noted that most of the classroom drama-based activities in the first semester were separate enactments, while the story and the script provided a unified plot structure for the theatrical activity in the second semester. It turned out that the experimental group participants acting out a structured story in the second semester made more significant progress than in the first semester. It is possible that the exposure to the structured plot and story concept (e.g., beginning, body, ending) provided in the form of a story/script deepened their concept of structure in English oral presentations. As structured enactment of drama was found to result in more heightened writing achievement than unstructured enactment (Podlozny, 2000 ), likewise structured enactment of drama in front of an authentic audience proved more effective in terms of heightening the sensitivity to presentation structure in the present study. It makes sense that enactment of a structured story would be more supportive of the self-awareness of structure needed in oral presentation.

Content The effort and time spent turning a picture book into an English script from scratch encouraged the students to pay more attention to what content to put in and how to arrange the plot points in a proper sequence. Some of the excerpts from the participants’ comments in this regard are as follows:

Before, when I faced a presentation assignment in the presentation class, I often found that what I wanted to say was incomplete. However, this time, for the theatrical play, I did what I was supposed to do! (Participant 19E)

This task prompted me to adjust the content of my presentation according to contingencies…Therefore, I think performance outside the classroom is more effective than presentation training in the classroom. (Participant 6E)

Because of this task, I have to speak English most of the time, so I gradually got used to speaking English. I also started to notice the word choices of friends around me and improved my own when expressing myself in English. This is a good phenomenon. (Participant 8E)

The above excerpts illustrated how the series of drama-based activities actually helped the participants with respect to presentation structure and content.

Audience Feedback from the participants clearly indicated that the experience of enacting a play production for an audience of children fostered the audience-centered mentality in several aspects: the level of English, audience interactions, and audience engagement. The participating students greatly anticipated what kinds of audience response there might be. It is plausible that the habits were transferred over from preparing for a theatrical play to the planning of their individual oral presentations.

Now I will change the ways of expressing myself according to different audiences, hoping that everyone understands me. Before, when I spoke, I was only concerned about myself. I will continue to hold this spirit and bravely express my thoughts in English. (Participant 7E)

Because the production was for children, I would think twice about whether I made any grammatical errors before I actually spoke out. (Participant 9E)

Because the audience that I faced was composed of children, I had to slow down and change my inflections to keep the children engrossed in our performance. (Participant 11E)

During the acting out of the dramatic play, we had to make adjustments according to audience responses. If they are less responsive, we must assist each other as a team to liven up the atmosphere. Children’s level [of English] is something to be taken into consideration, too. When it comes to designing the procedure of our play, we must adjust it to the level of the children so that the show could go on smoothly. (Participant 14E)

The statistical analysis indicates that the presence or absence of drama-based instruction with a classroom audience did not create significantly different results in the first semester. However, there were significant effects arising from the second stage of the study in which a real-life audience was introduced and included as part of their learning experiences. In contrast to the drama intervention in the first semester, which did not reveal significant impacts on students’ presentation performance nor self-perceived presentation skills, significant effects on performance and these perception variables appeared in the second semester—the time at which the real-life audience began to be introduced to the drama-based treatment. This is the key to the success of the drama-based activities and what really allowed the FL learners to outperform their counterparts assigned to the ordinary public-speaking training activities. Such results provide empirical evidence aligned with the theoretical stipulations on the centrality of audience proposed by scholars from the realm of theater studies (Brook, 1996 ; Etchells, 1999 ; Grotowski, 2012 ). Moreover, the findings empirically establish the need to fine-tune the practice of utilizing drama activities in language skills acquisition (Cornett, 2003 ; Dunn et al., 2013 ; Kao & O’Neill, 1998 ; Thompson & Rubin, 1996 ), necessitating the inclusion of a real-life audience as a crucial element of drama-related activities in language learning.

Accordingly, based on the findings of this study, three major pedagogical implications are proposed. First, it empirically establishes the need to include and implement regular (weekly) drama-based activities in an L2 speaking curriculum. The observation that the participants assigned to the drama-mediated experimental condition were capable of exhibiting better presentation skills and a more positive mindset to improve their oral skills entails that instructors should make drama-based activities at least a part of the curriculum. Second, the observation that the gain of the experimental group only started to manifest itself during the second semester points to the need to implement drama-based activities on a long-term basis (for at least two semesters); the positive effect of drama-based activities on FL learners’ oral presentation skills and mindset might not be salient if such activities only last for a semester.

Third, it is important to note that the evidence in the present study validates that long-term implementation of drama-based activities is only a necessary but insufficient condition for promoting FL oral presentation skills. The experimental group participants’ gain only started to become more salient after the drama-mediated treatment involved a real-life audience—a critical element that sets apart the experimental treatment implemented during the first and second semesters. Thus, to maximize the effectiveness of drama-based activities, the activities require a catalyst such as an authentic audience beyond the classroom for it to bloom. When the drama-based activities moved beyond the isolated pedagogical setting to include elements of real-world setting and interaction with an authentic audience, they became a more powerful tool for presentation training. Hence, this study provides an empirical demonstration that the nature of the audience in drama-based activities should be taken into consideration when searching for effective pedagogic tasks for FL presentation training. While the previous research reported the general effectiveness of drama-based language learning activities in promoting speaking skills (Di Pietro, 1987 ; Hwang et al., 2016 ; Kao & O’Neill, 1998 ; Kao et al., 2011 ; Lee, 2015 ; Miccoli, 2003 ; Whiteson, 1996 ), this study further demonstrates the nuanced effects of different types of drama-based practices and the key locus of their effects—the authentic audience beyond the classroom setting.

Consistent with the quantitative data reported above, the results of perception surveys and reflections also jointly show that public dramaturgical tasks that involve an authentic audience had effectively helped learners develop a repertoire of skills, in particular regarding enhanced audience awareness (which allowed the learners to keep the audience in mind when planning and delivering a presentation), sensitivity toward the structure of their presentation (which empowered the learners to effectively use the beginning-middle-end elements), and attention to content (which challenged the learners to frequently consider what elements to put in and how to present those elements for optimal outcomes). The above benefits echo some of the findings reported by Hung ( 2011 ), Warschauer ( 1999 ), and Yeh ( 2018 ). In addition to its positive impact on self-perceived presentation skills, drama-based activities also exerted a positive influence on the participants’ affect, fostering a more positive mindset toward collaborative learning with their peers (teamwork and friendship) and helping them to better see the purpose of their practices (task meaningfulness). Notably, the participants’ qualitative reports clearly indicated that virtually all the significant changes, including both the actual presentation performance and the positive impact on the aforementioned self-perceived presentation elements and mindsets, all occurred in the second stage of the research. This entails that positive changes in the participants’ behavior, performance, and mindset were significantly boosted only after the drama-based project was held in public. The task of presenting a dramatic play aimed at children had created a meaningful, educational, mind-changing platform where the FL learners were more willing to make efforts to apply the learned presentation techniques, and the learners were more likely to believe that what they were learning could genuinely make a difference to their presentation skills. Accordingly, in light of the findings of this study, to effectively enhance college FL learners’ presentation skills and to foster a positive state of mind for their presentation practices, instructors may want to systematically and regularly include drama-based tasks in a year-long (public-speaking) curriculum, and implement such tasks involving an audience beyond the classroom setting.

This study empirically establishes the effectiveness of drama-based tasks in promoting FL learners’ oral presentation performance and uncovers their self-perceived acquisition in presentation techniques. Analysis of the participants’ diachronic performance data showed that their oral performance was significantly enhanced only after they started to present for a real-life audience other than their classmates. Analysis of the survey and retrospective data also indicated the participants’ attention to three presentation skills—structure, audience adaptation and content—was significantly raised after their presentation involved a real-life audience.

Nevertheless, the findings of this study should be interpreted with care, given the relatively small sample of the study. Future research should include a larger population and a wider site selection for greater generalizability of research implications. A disclaimer should be made here that by no means does this article contend that speech presenters must be great actors. Furthermore, in spite of the insights of this study, it is important to note that the evidence of this study is only pertinent to the impact of drama-mediated tasks on the aspects of presentation skills investigated in this study (e.g., structure, audience adaptation and content). It is also worth noting that some types of drama activities may be inherently more supportive than others for certain learning outcomes: for example, structured dramatization may be more suitable for giving learners a deeper understanding of structure that is required in other types of communication.

Data Availability

The questionnaire that supports the findings of this study is available on request from the first author, Y. J. Lee. Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so raw data are not available.

Andresen, H. (2005). Role play and language development in the preschool years. Culture and Psychology, 11 (4), 387–414.

Article   Google Scholar  

Aristotle. (1984). Poetics . In: I. Bywater (Trans.). McGraw-Hill.

Beatty, K. (2015). Language, task and situation: Authenticity in the classroom. Journal of Language and Education, 1 (1), 27–37.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2), 77–101.

Breen, M. P. (1985). Authenticity in the language classroom. Applied Linguistics, 6 (1), 60–70.

Brook, P. (1996). The empty space: A book about the theatre . Simon and Schuster.

Casteleyn, J. (2019). Playing with improv(isational) theatre to battle public speaking stress. The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 24 (2), 147–154.

Google Scholar  

Celce-Murcia, M. (2008). Rethinking the role of communicative competence in language teaching. In E. A. Soler & M. P. S. Jorda (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning, chap. 3 (pp. 41–57). Springer.

Chamot, A. U. (2009). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.

Chen, C. C., & Brown, K. L. (2012). The effects of authentic audience on English as a second language (ESL) writers: A task-based, computer-mediated approach. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 25, 435–454.

Choi, J. (2008). The role of online collaboration in promoting ESL writing. English Language Teaching, 1 (1), 34–39.

Conard, F. C. (1992). The arts in education and a meta-analysis . Unpublished doctoral thesis, Purdue University, IN.

Cornett, C. E. (2003). Creating meaning through literature and the arts: Arts integration for classroom teachers . Pearson Education.

Council of Europe. (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages . Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages . Accessed 11 Jan 2021.

Di Pietro, R. J. (1987). Strategic interaction: Learning languages through scenarios . Cambridge University Press.

Dunn, J., Harden, A., & Marino, S. (2013). Drama and writing: ‘Overcoming the hurdle of the blank page.’ In M. Anderson & J. Dunn (Eds.), How drama activates learning: Contemporary research and practice (pp. 245–259). Bloomsbury.

Ekiert, M., Lampropoulou, S., Révész, A., & Torgersen, E. (2018). The effects of task type and L2 proficiency on discourse appropriacy in oral task performance. In N. Taguchi & Y. Kim (Eds.), Task-based approaches to teaching and assessing pragmatics, chap.10 (pp. 248–263). John Benjamins.

Ellis, R. (2000). Task-based research and language pedagogy. Language Learning Research, 4 (3), 193–220.

Enright, D. S., McCloskey, M. L., & Savignon, S. J. (1988). Integrating English: Developing English language and literacy in the multicultural classroom . Addison-Wesley.

Etchells, T. (1999). Certain Fragments: Contemporary performance and forced entertainment . Routledge.

Grotowski, J. (2012). Toward a poor theatre . Routledge.

Hafner, C. A., & Miller, L. (2011). Fostering learning autonomy in English for science: A collaborative digital video project in a technological learning environment. Language Leaning and Technology, 15 (3), 68–86.

Hung, S. T. (2011). Pedagogical applications of Vlogs: An investigation into ESP learners’ perceptions. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42 (5), 736–746.

Hwang, W. Y., Shadiev, R., Hsu, J. L., Huang, Y. M., Hsu, G. L., & Lin, Y. C. (2016). Effects of storytelling to facilitate EFL speaking using web-based multimedia system. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 29 (2), 215–241.

Kao, S. M., Carkin, G., & Hsu, L. F. (2011). Questioning techniques for promoting language learning with students of limited L2 oral proficiency in a drama-oriented language classroom. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 16 (4), 489–515.

Kao, S. M., & O’Neill, C. (1998). Words into worlds: Learning a second language through process drama . Ablex.

Kelner, L. B. (2002). The creative classroom: A guide for using drama in the classroom, preK-6 . Heinemann.

Kiernan, P. J., & Aizawa, K. (2004). Cell phones in task based learning: Are cell phones useful language learning tools? ReCALL, 16 (1), 71–84.

Lee, B., Patall, E., Cawthon, S., & Steingut, R. (2015). Meta-analysis of the effects of drama-based pedagogy on K-16 student outcomes since 1985. Review of Educational Research, 85, 3–49.

Lee, Y. J. (2015). Drama as a training aid to enhancing underachievers’ achievement in the EFL public speaking context. The International Journal of Assessment and Evaluation, 22 (3), 25–42.

Lin, V., Kang, Y. C., Liu, G. Z., & Lin, W. (2016). Participants’ experiences and interactions on Facebook group in an EFL course in Taiwan. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25 (1), 99–109.

Lin, M. H., Li, J. J., Hung, P. Y., & Huang, H. W. (2014). Blogging a journal: Changing students’ writing skills and perceptions. ELT Journal, 68 (4), 422–431.

Long, M. H. (2015). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching . Wiley.

Lyster, R., & Sato, M. (2013). Skill acquisition theory and the role of practice in L2 development. In M. P. García-Mayo, M. J. Gutiérrez-Mangado, & M. Martínez-Adrián (Eds.), Contemporary approaches to SLA (pp. 71–91). John Benjamins.

Mages, W. K. (2008). Does creative drama promote language development in early childhood? A review of the methods and measures employed in the empirical literature. Review of Educational Research, 78 (1), 124–152.

McCaslin, N. (Ed.). (1990). Creative drama in the primary grades: A handbook for teachers (Revised). Players Press.

Miccoli, L. (2003). English through drama for oral skills development. ELT Journal, 57 (2), 122–129.

Nielsen, K. (2015). Teaching writing in adult literacy: Practices to foster motivation and persistence and improve learning outcomes. Adult Learning, 26 (4), 143–150.

Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching . Cambridge University Press.

Phinney, M. (1991). Computer-assisted writing and writing apprehension in ESL students. In P. A. Dunkel (Ed.), Computer assisted language learning and testing: Research issues and practice (pp. 189–204). Newbury House.

Pilkington, R., Bennett, C., & Vaughan, S. (2000). An evaluation of computer mediated communication to support group discussion in continuing education. Educational Technology and Society, 3 (3), 349–360.

Podlozny, A. (2000). Strengthening verbal skills through the use of classroom drama: A clear link. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 34 (3/4), 239–275.

Purcell-Gates, V., Degener, S. C., Jacobson, E., & Soler, M. (2002). Impact of authentic literacy on adult literacy practices. Reading Research Quarterly, 37 (1), 70–83.

Rogers, J., & Révész, A. (2020). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs. In J. McKinley & H. Rose (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of research methods in applied linguistics . Routledge.

Rose, C. (1987). Accelerated Learning . Dell.

Sato, M., & Loewen, S. (2019). Methodological strengths, challenges, and joys of classroom-based quasi-experimental research. In R. M. D. Keyser & G. P. Botana (Eds.), Doing SLA research with implications for the classroom: Reconciling methodological demands and pedagogical applicability (pp. 31–54). John Benjamins.

Skehan, P. (1998). Task-based instruction. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 186–268.

Stinson, M., & Winston, J. (2011). Drama education and second language learning: A growing field of practice and research. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 16 (4), 479–488.

Thompson, I., & Rubin, J. (1996). Can strategy instruction improve listening comprehension? Foreign Language Annals, 29 (3), 331–342.

Thornbury, S. (2010, August 15). C is for communicative [Web blog message]. http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/c-is-for-communicative/

Wang, Y. C. (2015). Promoting collaborative writing through wikis: A new approach for advancing innovative and active learning in an ESP context. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 28 (6), 499–512.

Wacha, R., & Liu, Y. T. (2017). Testing the efficacy of two new variants of recasts with standard recasts in communicative conversational settings: An exploratory longitudinal study. Language Teaching Research, 21 (2), 189–216.

Warschauer, M. (1999). Electronic literacies . Erlbaum.

Whiteson, V. (1996). New ways of using drama and literature in language teaching. New Ways in TESOL Series II. Innovative Classroom Techniques . TESOL.

Widdowson, H. G. (1990). Aspects of language teaching . Oxford University Press.

Willis, J. (1996). A Framework for task-based learning . Longman.

Yeh, H. C. (2018). Exploring the perceived benefits of the process of multimodal video making in developing multiliteracies. Language Teaching and Technology, 22 (2), 28–37.

Zhang, H., Hwang, W. Y., Tseng, S. Y., & Chen, H. S. L. (2019). Collaborative drama-based learning in familiar contexts. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 57 (3), 697–722.

Download references

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (Grant No. 104-2410-H-025-015).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Applied English, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung, Taiwan

Yow-jyy Joyce Lee

Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

Yeu-Ting Liu

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by YJL. The first draft of the manuscript was written by YJL and both authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yeu-Ting Liu .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Lee, Yj.J., Liu, YT. Promoting Oral Presentation Skills Through Drama-Based Tasks with an Authentic Audience: A Longitudinal Study. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 31 , 253–267 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00557-x

Download citation

Accepted : 22 February 2021

Published : 15 March 2021

Issue Date : June 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-021-00557-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• EFL presentation
• Drama-based language teaching
• Authentic audience
• Oral skills
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

• Publishing Policies
• For Organizers/Editors
• For Authors
• For Peer Reviewers

An Insight to Attitudes and Challenges in Oral Presentations Among University Students

Oral presentation skills are often seen as important skills that university students need to possess once graduated. However, face to face oral presentation is still seen as one of the biggest challenges a student face as they often experience nervousness and shyness, give no eye contact, do not address the audience, and many more. With this in view, more research evidence is needed to understand students’ attitude towards oral presentation, oral presentation courses and the difficulties that students’ face when presenting. Hence, this study has two aims. The first is to investigate students’ attitude towards oral presentations skills and oral presentation courses. Secondly, this study aims to find out the difficulty that students face when giving oral presentations. A quantitative analysis was carried out to analyze the data. The data was collected among 145 university students from an oral presentation course in a selected university. The data obtained was analyzed for mean and percentages using the SPSS version 26. This study found that though students are aware on the importance of oral presentation skills, many are still facing challenges when doing it. Results yielded from four aspects which are from the general presentations challenges, linguistic, background knowledge, and psychological challenges. It is hoped that this study will help to contribute to the understanding of oral presentations among university students.

Keywords: Anxiety , attitudes , challenges , oral presentation , university students

Introduction

Employers often regard communication skills (written, oral, and listening) as one of the most sought-after skills when hiring ( Alshare & Hindi, 2004 ). It is one of the reasons why job interviews are conducted, which is to assess candidate’s communication skills. Oral presentation is the most popular speaking genre in classes as well as the workplace ( Chang & Huang, 2015 ). Most higher education courses include presentations as a method of assessment as well as classroom teaching and learning activities. In addition, successful communicative goals include effective oral presentation skills ( Evans, 2013 ). According to Van Emden and Becker ( 2017 ), being able to speak effectively to an audience is one of the benefits that students can gain from their tertiary education. Also, being able to present effectively is a valuable skill for students in whatever subjects they study and will consequently give greater achievements in their academics, career prospects, and their working lives in the future ( Van Emden & Becker, 2017 ).

Christensen ( 2002 ) observes that tertiary level students are provided with plenty opportunities to practice their presentation skills. These opportunities range from participating in group discussions, voicing out opinions during lectures, presenting formal speeches during orientation programs and other formal functions to defending their final year project to be assessed by others. In fact, oral presentation assessments are common assessment types in higher education and the function is to measure a student’s ability to create and deliver an engaging, informed, and persuasive argument ( Nash et al., 2016 ). On top of that, many higher educational institutions offer oral presentation and public speaking courses to further develop students’ presentation skills.

In line with the importance of oral presentation skills, University Teknologi Mara, Malaysia offers the course English for Oral Presentations to its students. The course focuses on oral communication theory and practice with emphasis on the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication skills. Learning takes place through a variety of activities to enhance learners’ ability to use the correct language for a presentation, to exploit a variety of materials and sources, and to use visual aids appropriately in oral presentations. Upon completion of the course, students are expected to develop skills to participate in speech communication activities confidently and competently.

Definition of oral presentation

The Learning Centre of The University of New South Wales ( 2010 ) defines oral presentation as a short talk on an assigned topic delivered to a group of people. In an oral presentation, one or more students will present their views and positions on a topic based on their readings or research. According to the University of Wollongong (n.d.) oral presentations can be observed in social events, classrooms and workplaces. In addition, an oral presentation at university shows a student's ability to communicate relevant information effectively in an interesting and engaging manner.

Students attitude towards oral presentations

There have been many past studies written on students’ attitude towards oral presentations. One study by Dansieh et al. ( 2021 ) was done to investigate the possible causes of anxiety towards oral presentations among tertiary students from Technical University, Ghana. The exploratory case study on 46 students used surveys and interviews as the instruments. The study found that even though students are aware of the importance of oral presentations, 63% of the respondents experienced anxiety when asked to give oral presentations. Additionally, 23.9 % experienced nervousness while another 13% experienced stage fright when asked to give oral presentations. The study further revealed that the respondents associated their unfavourable experience to three causes: 1) fear of making mistakes (65.2%), 2) fear towards the audience (21.7%), and 3) lack of knowledge in oral presentations (13%).

Another recent study that measures students’ attitude towards oral presentations was conducted by Pham et al. ( 2022 ) on 600 second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Van Lang University in Vietnam. The quantitative study used a survey questionnaire with 38 questions. The study reported that 89.7% of the respondents agree that oral presentation skills are important for their career prospects, and 90.7% of the respondents believe that being able to give good oral presentations is an advantage to students. Additionally, the respondents of the study also acknowledged that oral presentations can help improve communication skills, build confidence, and increase creativity. Despite showing positive understanding towards the importance of oral presentations, 57.1% of the students dread the idea of standing and speaking in front of an audience.

The next study that shed light on students’ attitude towards oral presentation is by Marinho et al. ( 2017 ). The cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study was conducted on 1135 undergraduate students using two instruments: a questionnaire and the Self-statements During Public Speaking Scale (SSPS). The study reported that 89.3% of the respondents believe that oral presentation courses should be included in the curriculum. This implies that there was high awareness among students towards the importance of oral presentations. Additionally, the study also reported that 63.9% of the respondents expressed fear towards oral presentations and it is also highlighted that the female gender is prevalent in the percentage. Marinho et al. ( 2017 ) also claims that students with lesser experience in conducting oral presentations and students with negative self-perception tend to have more fear towards oral presentations.

There is also a qualitative study that was conducted on this subject. Grieve et al. ( 2021 ) studied 46 undergraduate students from University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. Participants of the study expressed that they were aware of the importance of having oral presentation skills. The study also identified six themes: fear of being judged; physical symptoms; uncertainty about the topic; negative effect on university experience; practice and preparation; more practical support needed. These themes show that overall, students have fear towards oral presentations. Grieve et al. ( 2021 ) subsequently reported that the fear towards oral presentation that students have negatively impacted their learning and student experience, and also affected their mental wellbeing. The study concluded that there is a need to provide support to higher education students with public speaking fear.

Finally, a quantitative study conducted by Dellah et al. ( 2020 ) on 199 UiTM Melaka students investigated students’ anxiety level and the correlation between gender, program, language proficiency and oral presentation anxiety. The study used the adapted Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale or FLCAS as questionnaire. The finding indicated that students experience moderate anxiety towards oral presentation. Dellah et al. ( 2020 ) elaborated that this could be because students were worried of other’s negative evaluation which hinders their readiness to present, and subsequently affect their learning performance in general. This study also concluded that while gender and program are not determining factors, language proficiency does impact students’ anxiety level.

Hence, it is clear that even though students depict their awareness on the importance of oral presentations, they have a negative attitude towards them. The next section of literature review will further elaborate on the challenges and difficulties that students have when dealing with oral presentations.

Challenges students faced during oral presentations

There has been much research done to understand the challenges and difficulties that students face when they are asked to give oral presentations. Imron and Hantari ( 2019 ) studied 23 students in Indonesia. The qualitative research aimed to examine the possible challenges that students face that result in their high anxiety when dealing with oral presentations and public speaking. The study concluded that there are four challenges that students face: 1) self-value (their confidence level), 2) discomposure (fear of failures, embarrassment, and making mistakes), 3) lack of preparation time, and 4) unfamiliarity with the topics. Imron and Hantari ( 2019 ) suggested that the academic institution should provide a supportive environment for students to learn about oral presentations.

Another study that investigated the challenges that students face when dealing with oral presentations was done by Soomro et al. ( 2019 ). The quantitative study was conducted on 100 engineering undergraduate students in Pakistan. The study used a questionnaire as the instrument and reported that there are seven factors that contribute as challenges to students The factors are stress and nervousness (71%), lack of motivation (63%), poor oral communication skills (55%), fear and anxiety (52%), shyness (51%) and low self-confidence (51%). The study suggested that in order to curb this problem, there is a need for institutions to provide training to students and also offer them ample opportunities to practice oral presentations ( Soomro et al., 2019 ).

Pham et al. ( 2022 ) reported a similar finding. The study depicted that three most prevalent challenges that students face regarding oral presentations are fear of making mistakes (53.8%), shyness (57.1%), and the lack of topical knowledge (64.1%). Pham et al. ( 2022 ) also elaborated that students are usually more confident and perform better when they present in their native language as compared to when they present in English. They argue that this happens because students mostly think using their native language and encounter difficulty translating it to English when presenting.

Hamad and Seyyedi ( 2020 ) conducted a more comprehensive study on the challenges that students face during oral presentations in Soran University, Iraq. Their quantitative study on 121 undergraduate students revealed that linguistic factors (language proficiency) were the primary cause for English speaking difficulties with 36.42%, followed by affective (fear of making mistakes and being evaluated, anxiety, low self-confidence and shyness) and sociocultural factors (environment and opportunities) with 35.63% and 27.95 % respectively. The study also concluded that the challenges are the result of a combination of interrelated and intersected psychological, linguistic and sociocultural factors.

One recent study by Bui et al. ( 2022 ) was conducted on 90 undergraduate students from Tay Do University, Vietnam. The study used questionnaires and interviews as instruments. The study revealed that 88.3% of the students acknowledged the importance of oral presentations and felt that they had been given ample opportunities to present. The study also depicted that the common difficulties faced by students stem from linguistic (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar), background knowledge and psychological factors (anxiety, self-confidence, lack of motivation, fear of making mistakes). The interviews of teachers and students corroborated this finding.

Problem Statement

There are many obvious advantages of conducting oral presentations in language classrooms. According to Brooks and Wilson ( 2014 ), there are five benefits of conducting oral presentations: 1) it is a learner-centred activity; 2) it integrates the use of reading, writing, listening, and speaking; 3) it provides authentic context for language learning; 4) it adds value to using English outside of the class; and 5) it increases students’ motivation level. Additionally, Paxton and Truxal ( 2019 ) added that teaching oral presentations also promotes classroom diversity and allows more variety to assessment methods.

Due to its extensive benefits, many higher educational institutions offer oral presentation courses to their students. Dansieh et al. ( 2021 ) argues that despite these offered opportunities, students will try to avoid presenting to the extent that they choose to not attend an occasion when there is a possibility that they are asked to speak in front of an audience. Dansieh et al. ( 2021 ) claims that this is due to their heightened anxiety towards giving oral presentations. This is in spite of their awareness that oral presentation and public speaking skills are imperative communicative skills in both their academic and career advancement prospects. Grieve et al. ( 2021 ) also agreed to this notion. In their qualitative study, Grieve et al. ( 2021 ) found that students are afraid of oral presentations even though they are aware of the importance of oral presentations. In addition, the study also noted that students’ fear of oral presentations has negatively impacted their overall learning and student experience. Although there is much awareness of student’s anxiety in oral presentations, more research evidence is needed regarding students’ attitude towards oral presentation courses and the difficulties that students’ face when presenting. Hence, this study has two aims. The first is to investigate students' attitude towards oral presentations skills and oral presentation courses. Secondly, this study aims to find out the difficulty that students face when giving oral presentations.

Research Questions

What are students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course?

What are the difficulties that students encounter when performing oral presentations?

Research Methods

This quantitative research is done to investigate students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills, oral presentation course and the challenges they face when giving oral presentations. The instrument is a survey adapted from Bui et al. ( 2022 ) and Pham et al. ( 2022 ). 145 students who are taking the English for Oral Presentations subject were chosen using the purposive sampling method. The adapted questionnaire has four different sections. Section 1 has items on the demographic profile. In section 2, the 11 items are on students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills. Section 3 has 8 items on students’ attitudes towards oral presentation course while the final section, has 20 items on the challenges that students face during oral presentations.

Table 1 above depicts the distribution of items in the survey. The reliability statistics for the instrument. SPSS analysis revealed a Cronbach alpha of .934 thus showing a high internal reliability of the instrument used. Data collection is performed via Google Form. Collected data is then analyzed using SPSS version 26 and is presented in the form of percentages and mean scores to answer the research questions;

Students’ demographic profile

In total, 145 respondents answered the survey and 75% of them were female students, while the remaining 25% were male students. Most of these students (63.4%) were students from social sciences and humanities programs. This is followed by students from the applied sciences (20%) and the students from the business programs (16.6%). The majority of the students were first year students (65.3%) followed by second- and third-year students with 27.1% and 7.6% respectively. Among these 145 students, 31.7% of them obtained grade A for their English paper in the SPM examination. 32.4% obtained grade B, 20% obtained grade C. 10.3% obtained grade D, while the remaining 5.5% obtained grade E for the examination. Hence, it can be said that the respondents constitute of mostly intermediate and higher intermediate students in the aspect of language proficiency.

R1: Students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course

This section presents data to answer research question 1: What are students’ attitudes towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course?

When evaluating the findings of students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills, it is found that their attitude can be categorised to the perceived importance of oral presentation skills on i) future use, ii) improvement of their language and communication skills, and iii) general learning purposes.

Table 2 illustrates how students perceive the importance of oral presentation skills for their future use. The most significant importance that students perceive is that presentation skills play a vital role for their future careers with the mean of 4.3. This is followed by the perceived importance of presentation skills on their confidence with studies and work with the mean score of 4.1. In terms of connecting them with success, the mean score achieved is 4.0 and the least mean score is 3.0 for the statement “Presentation skills are just one of the skills, so we do not need to be excellent or focus too much on the skill”.

Table 3 depicts the perceived importance of presentation skills on improvement of language and communication skills. It is revealed that most respondents feel that oral presentation skills help improve their communication skills with a mean of 4.3. This is followed by improving their language proficiency with 4.1. Respondents also feel that oral presentation skills help master their thought and improve their speaking ability with a mean score of 4.0.

Table 4 shows the results for students’ perceived importance of presentation skills for general learning purposes. Items AOPS2 and AOPS9 shows the highest score. Respondents feel that having the ability to give good presentations is necessary for students and that they give better presentations when it is for their favourite subject. For item AOPS7, 3.9 mean score is recorded, while a lower mean score of 3.4 is obtained for item AOPS10.

Table 5 illustrates students’ attitudes towards an oral presentation course. Oral presentation courses aim at providing students guidance to deal with external and internal factors that hinder effective presentation. For the external factors, it is found that respondents feel that the course helped them understand about body language when presenting the most with a mean score of 4.1. This is followed by a mean score of 4.0 for giving them knowledge on presentation skills. The same mean score of 3.9 is obtained for items AOPC1 and AOPC2. As for the internal factors that hinder effective presentations, the highest mean of 4.0 is obtained for item AOPC8. This is followed by a mean score of 3.9 for item AOPC3. Additionally, the respondents stated that the course helped them feel more confident about presenting (mean score= 3.7) and taught them how to deal with anxiety when presenting (mean score= 3.5).

R2: Challenges that students encounter when performing oral presentations

This section presents data to answer research question 2: What are the difficulties that students encounter when performing oral presentations? In the context of the current study, it is found that difficulties when performing oral presentations can be divided into four categories; general, linguistic, background knowledge and psychological challenges.

Table 6 presents the general challenges that students face during oral presentations. For general challenges, the highest mean is obtained for the statement “You have faced difficulties when making a presentation.” The next item with a mean of 3.7 is that students’ main difficulty is the lack of time for preparation and practice. Items DOP14 and DOP 16 both obtained the mean of 3.6. The lowest mean is for item DOP8 which states that students perceive their conversation skill as poor.

Table 7 shows the eight items on linguistics difficulties that students face during oral presentations. The highest mean (4.0) is obtained for item DOP3, followed by DOP 5 with a mean score of 3.8. Next, for item DOP9 and DOP2 that are items on vocabulary, the mean scores obtained are 3.7 and 3.6 respectively. The least mean is obtained for item DOP6 with 2.9 mean score, followed by item DOP4 with 3.0 mean score

Table 8 depicts students’ attitude towards challenges pertaining to background knowledge. Respondents of this study feel that background knowledge plays a significant role in oral presentation skills as mean score of 3.9 is achieved for this item. This is followed by a mean score of 3.8 for the statement “You meet difficulty voicing your opinion on unfamiliar topic”. Finally, a mean score of 3.6 is obtained for item DOP12.

Table 9 shows the mean score for psychological challenges that students face during oral presentations. The highest mean is obtained for DOP17 where respondents feel afraid of making mistakes. Items DOP16 and DOP18 have the same mean score of 3.9. For item DOP19, “You have high motivation for presentations in classrooms”, the lowest mean score of 3.1 is obtained, while the second lowest mean score is obtained by item DOP20 which is 3.2.

Students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation course

This study focuses on students’ attitude towards oral presentation skills and courses as well as the challenges that they face during oral presentations. The findings of this study can augment the existing literature, especially regarding students’ attitude on oral presentation course. From the findings of this study, it can be gauged that overall, students understand the vital roles that oral presentations play for their future career. They also view presentation skills as something that they have to master, in order to succeed in their study life, and to obtain better career opportunities. The findings of this study can corroborate previous studies by Dansieh et al. ( 2021 ) and Pham et al. ( 2022 ) that both depict students’ awareness on the importance of having good presentation skills.

Next, this study also found that students view oral presentations as a tool that can help them improve their communicative abilities, language proficiency, and help them in their studies in general. This finding is parallel to Pham et al. ( 2022 ) who also found that students believe that oral presentation skills can enhance their communicative ability, and Amelia ( 2022 ) who found that oral presentations can help students improve their language proficiency and aid in developing academic skills. Hence, it can be concluded that students are generally aware of the importance of presentation skills on their study, career prospects, and life in general.

The next finding of this study is that students view the oral presentation course they take, ELC590 as being able to help them externally and internally when it comes to oral presentation. Students feel that the subject gives them knowledge about oral presentations, and also teaches them about content and body language. Additionally, the subject also helps students deal with anxiety and build their confidence when presenting. The study of Pham et al. ( 2022 ) had similar results where students feel that oral presentation course helped them with knowledge and confidence level when presenting. Similar to this study, it was also established that taking an oral presentation course made students better presenters for other subjects.

The challenges that students face during oral presentations

Firstly, this study found that most students have faced challenges during oral presentations and having lack of time for preparation is also one of the biggest challenges they faced. This finding is similar to Bui et al. ( 2022 ) where most students responded “Agree” and “Strongly Agree” to the similar statement. Therefore, it is established that even though many are aware on the importance of oral presentation skills, students still do not know how to overcome challenges revolving around it.

Next, this study also found that even though not many students regard their conversational skill as poor, linguistic factor is still a major challenge that they face during oral presentations. This is similar to the findings by Hamad and Seyyedi ( 2020 ). To elaborate, this study found that most students feel that searching for the right word to use is a challenge they faced, and they also encountered difficulties with limited vocabulary. They also faced challenges when it comes to pronunciation and grammar, with pronunciation being the least worried element. This finding is contrary to Bui et al. ( 2022 ) who found that pronunciation is the biggest linguistic challenge, followed by vocabulary and grammar. This could be due to geographical factor as both studies were conducted in different countries. From this finding, it can be gauged that as second language learners, students’ language proficiency will always be a challenge, and to overcome this, students should be exposed to role plays or other speaking activities that require them to speak in English spontaneously.

For psychological factors, this study found that the biggest challenge that students have is fear of making mistakes. This is followed by anxiety when speaking in front of others, and fear of criticism and evaluation by others. The result is consistent with the study by Pham et al. ( 2022 ) who found that fear of making mistakes is the biggest psychological challenge that students faced. A study by Soomro et al. ( 2019 ) too stated anxiety as the major challenge but it was ranked first as compared to the findings of this study. Finally, the finding of this study can also corroborate to the finding by Imron and Hantari ( 2019 ) who found fear of making mistakes and anxiety as challenges that most students face during oral presentations. Based on this finding, it can be seen that even when students are taught anxiety and methods to overcome it in the oral presentation course, these psychological factors still exist and hinders students from creating effective presentations.

Pedagogical implications

Students attitude towards oral presentation skills and oral presentation courses, as well as the challenges they face when asked to conduct oral presentations are explored in this study. According to this study, students are generally aware on the importance of presentation skills on their study, career prospects, and life in general. However, many students still face difficulties when dealing with presentations. The challenges that they face can be divided into general, background knowledge, linguistic and psychological factors. Out of these four challenges, psychological factors recorded the highest mean collectively. Since the finding also found that students value oral presentation courses, it is suggested that educators incorporate strategies to overcome psychological factors in their courses. Students should be taught to increase the level of preparation they have, embrace anxiety, and use the nervous energy they have to create better presentations.

In addition, educators should also provide a friendly atmosphere that allows students to voice their opinion. Also, since fear of making mistakes is listed as one of the traits that students have, sharing sessions could be incorporated in lessons to allow students to practice speaking without the pressure of being evaluated or judged. Finally, a participatory approach in teaching and learning can be inculcated in lessons to reduce students’ communication apprehension.

Suggestions for future research

Since this study revolves only around 145 students of Universiti Teknologi Mara,Shah Alam, a greater sample size and a broader context could produce a more accurate result. Next, since it has been established that students are generally aware about the importance of oral presentations, studies on the factors that make students dread presentations could be done. In addition, it is also crucial to conduct experimental studies that investigate the effectiveness of oral presentation courses to delve on the ways these courses can further help students with oral presentation skills.

Alshare, K., & Hindi, N. M. (2004). The importance of presentation skills in the classroom: Students and instructors perspectives. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 19(4), 6-15

Amelia, R. (2022). Indonesian EFL students' attitude toward oral presentations. Indonesian Journal of Integrated English Language Teaching, 8(1), 15-30. DOI:

Brooks, G., & Wilson, J. (2014). Using oral presentations to improve students’ English language skills. Kwansei Gakuin University Humanities Review, 19(1), 199-212.

Bui, T. T. L., Huynh, T. M. D., Nguyen, T. M. N., Nguyen, T. N. C., & Nguyen, T. Y. N. (2022). The difficulties in oral presentation of English-majored juniors at tay do university, Vietnam. European Journal of English Language Teaching, 7(2). DOI:

Chang, Y., & Huang, H. (2015). Exploring TED Talks as a pedagogical resource for oral presentations: A corpus-based move analysis. English Teaching & Learning, 39(4), 29-62. DOI:

Christensen, J. P. (2002). Understanding and conducting a successful presentation assignment. Guidelines, 24(2), 23-28.

Dansieh, S. A., Owusu, E., & Seidu, G. A. (2021). Glossophobia: The Fear of Public Speaking in ESL Students in Ghana. Language Teaching, 1(1), 22. DOI:

Dellah, N. F., Zabidin, N., Nordin, N. A., Amanah, F. H., & Atan, M. A. (2020). Glossophobia: Evaluating University students' speaking anxiety in English Oral Presentations. Jurnal ILMI, 10(1), 116-126.

Evans, S. (2013). Just wanna give you guys a bit of an update: Insider perspectives on business presentations in Hong Kong. English for Speaking Purposes, 32(4), 195-207. DOI: 10.1016/j.esp.2013.05.003

Grieve, R., Woodley, J., Hunt, S. E., & McKay, A. (2021). Student fears of oral presentations and public speaking in higher education: a qualitative survey. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(9), 1–13. DOI:

Hamad, K. Q., & Seyyedi, K. (2020). Communication challenges facing Soran University students in speaking English as a Foreign Language. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 3(8), 40-53.

Imron, A., & Hantari, W. C. (2019). EFL students’ attitudes toward public speaking and anxiety in speaking impromptu speech. CaLLs (Journal of Culture, Arts, Literature, and Linguistics), 5(1), 49-58. DOI:

Marinho, A. C. F., de Medeiros, A. M., Gama, A. C. C., & Teixeira, L. C. (2017). Fear of public speaking: perception of college students and correlates. Journal of Voice, 31(1), 127-e7. DOI:

Nash, G., Crimmins, G., & Oprescu, F. (2016). If first-year students are afraid of public speaking assessments what can teachers do to alleviate such anxiety? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(4), 586–600.

Paxton, S., & Truxal, D. (2019). From chinmoku to pera pera: Teaching presentation skills at university in japan. The Journal of Rikkyo University Language Center, 41, 63-73.

Pham, M. T., Nguyen, D. N. Q., Nguyen, T. K. C., Nguyen, H. N. M., Hoang, T. A. T., & Pham, V. P. H. (2022). The Reality of English Presentation Skills of English-majored Students in Vietnam: A Case Study at Van Lang University. International Journal of TESOL & Education, 2(2), 27-46. DOI:

Soomro, M. A., Siming, I. A., Shah, S. H. R., Rajper, M. A., Naz, S., & Channa, M. A. (2019). An investigation of anxiety factors during English oral presentation skills of engineering undergraduates in pakistan. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(3), 203-210. DOI:

The University of New South Wales. (2010). Oral presentations for tutorial and seminars. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/37858326/oral-presentations-the-learning-centre-university-of-new-south-

University of Wollongong. (n.d.). Oral presentations. https://www.uow.edu.au/student/learning-co-op/assessments/presentations/

Van Emden, J., & Becker, L. (2017). Presentation skills for students. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Copyright information

About this article

Publication date.

25 September 2023

Article Doi

https://doi.org/10.15405/epes.23097.49

978-1-80296-964-1

European Publisher

Print ISBN (optional)

Edition number.

1st Edition

Language, education, literature, linguistics

Cite this article as:

Zakaria, S. F., Rusli, R., Mat, N. H. C., & Tazijan, F. (2023). An Insight to Attitudes and Challenges in Oral Presentations Among University Students. In M. Rahim, A. A. Ab Aziz, I. Saja @ Mearaj, N. A. Kamarudin, O. L. Chong, N. Zaini, A. Bidin, N. Mohamad Ayob, Z. Mohd Sulaiman, Y. S. Chan, & N. H. M. Saad (Eds.), Embracing Change: Emancipating the Landscape of Research in Linguistic, Language and Literature, vol 7. European Proceedings of Educational Sciences (pp. 543-555). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epes.23097.49

We care about your privacy

We use cookies or similar technologies to access personal data, including page visits and your IP address. We use this information about you, your devices and your online interactions with us to provide, analyse and improve our services. This may include personalising content or advertising for you. You can find out more in our privacy policy and cookie policy and manage the choices available to you at any time by going to ‘Privacy settings’ at the bottom of any page.

Manage My Preferences

You have control over your personal data. For more detailed information about your personal data, please see our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy .

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the site. Without these cookies, services you have asked for cannot be provided.

Third-party advertising and social media cookies are used to (1) deliver advertisements more relevant to you and your interests; (2) limit the number of times you see an advertisement; (3) help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaign; and (4) understand people’s behavior after they view an advertisement. They remember that you have visited a site and quite often they will be linked to site functionality provided by the other organization. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved April 2, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, what is a theoretical framework | guide to organizing, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, how to write a research proposal | examples & templates, what is your plagiarism score.

Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

Let’s talk

Change isn’t easy, but we can help. Together we’ll create informed and inspired leaders ready to shape the future of your business.

© 2024 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

• Privacy Policy
• Copyright Information
• Terms of Use
• About Harvard Business Publishing
• Higher Education
• Harvard Business Review
• Harvard Business School

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

Cookie and Privacy Settings

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

The Cersonsky Lab at UW-Madison

The Cersonsky Lab is a research group based at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

8 Tips for a Literature Review Presentation

by Caleb Youngwerth

Literature reviews for research are very different from any other presentation you may have done before, so prepare to relearn how to present. The goals of research literature reviews are different, the style is different, even the pacing is different. Even if you have previously done a literature review in an academic setting, you will still want to know these tips. I found this out the hard way, so you don’t have to. Also, to clarify, these tips are meant for a literature review of a topic, not a singular study or paper, though many of the tips do apply to both.

1. Highlight current research

The point of a literature review for research is to highlight the current state of research related to your topic, not to simply give background information. Background information is important and should be included, but the focus of the presentation should be showing some current studies that either confirm or challenge the topic you are studying. As much as textbooks from 30 years ago might seem to have all the information you need for your presentation, a research study from this decade does a far better job representing the current state of the topic, which is the end goal of the presentation. Also, since the new research should be the focal point of the presentation, as a general piece of advice, try to give each research study a minimum of one full slide, so you can give a fuller picture of what the study actually concluded and how they reached their conclusion.

2. Alternate old and new

The best way to keep people listening to your presentation is to vary what you include in your presentation. Rather than trying to give all of the background information first and then showcase all the flashy new research, try to use the two interchangeably. Organize the presentation by idea and give all the background needed for the idea, then develop the idea further by using the new research studies to help illustrate your point. By doing this, you not only avoid having to backtrack and reteach the background for each and every new study, but also help keep the presentation interesting for the audience. This method also helps the audience avoid being overwhelmed since only a little bit of new information is introduced at a time. Obviously, you may need to include a brief introductory section that contains nothing but textbook information that is absolutely necessary to understand anything about the topic, but the more varied the presentation, the better.

3. Use complete sentences

Every presentation class up to this point probably has taught you that slides with full sentences are harmful to your presentation because it is distracting to the listener. Unlearn all that information for this style of presentation. Bullet points are still good, but you should have complete ideas (which usually means complete sentences) for every single point. If someone would be able to read your slides and not hear you, and still be able to understand most of your presentation, your literature review is perfect in a research setting. The point of this presentation is to share all the new information you have learned, so hiding it is helping no one. You still do not want to be reading your slides verbatim and can absolutely add information beyond the slides, but all your main ideas should be on the slides.

4. Read smart

I will admit that I stole this tip from Rosy, but it is a very good tip, so I decided to include it. When you read, you want to read as much as you can, but wasting time reading an irrelevant research study is helping no one. When finding a new study, read the abstract, then the conclusion, then the pictures. If it looks like a good study from those three parts, or you personally find it interesting, you then can go over the actual paper and read it, but by reading the less dense parts first, you can get a general idea of the study without actually having to take a lot of time to read the entire paper. Though textbooks and review papers generally are a little more difficult to read using this method, you can still look at the introduction, pictures, and conclusion and save time reading the rest if the source ends up not being interesting or important.

5. Reading is good for you

As much as you want to read smart when you can, the more you read, the more knowledgeable you become. The goal of the presentation is to become an expert on you topic, so the only way you can do that is by reading as much as you can. You should read more information than you present, since many sources you read probably will not fit in a time-constrained presentation. As Rosy likes to say, in anything research, only about 10% of what you know should actually be shared with the world. By reading more, you are better-suited to answer questions, and you also just generally are able to understand what you are studying better because, chances are, the main purpose of this presentation for you is to help you better understand your research. If something looks interesting and is vaguely related to your topic, read it; it will be beneficial to you, even if you do not end up presenting the information.

6. Let pictures talk for you

When reading research papers, the pictures are usually the best part. Your presentation should be the same way. The best way to be able to show the concept you are trying to explain is to literally show it. The best way to show the results of a research study is usually by showing a graph or infographic, so if the paper has a graph that shows the results, you should absolutely use it. Charts, diagrams, and even videos can also help illustrate a piece of background information that might be difficult to put into words. That being said, you should know and be able to explain every single part of the graphic. Otherwise, it loses meaning and makes the audience even more confused. Captions can and should be used to help explain the graphic, not only to remind you, but also let your audience know what the general idea of the graphic is. Since they keep slides interesting, you should probably have some sort of picture on every slide, otherwise the slides will be not only bland, but also likely less informative.

7. Avoid overcrowded slides

Just because you should have a lot of information in your presentation does not mean that your slides need to show that. In fact, a slide with too much information will only harm your presentation since your audience will be distracted trying to read all of a long slide while you are trying to explain it. Doing anything to make slides less dense will help avoid having the audience focused on the slide, so they focus on you more. Transitions that only show one point at a time or wait to reveal an image can be helpful in breaking up an overcrowded slide. Also, simply adding more slides can help since it accomplishes the purpose of putting less information on your slides while still keeping the exact same amount of information. You still want to share as much information as you can with the audience, but overcrowded slides do not accomplish this purpose.

8. Expect questions

Another thing that might be slightly different about a research presentation is questions. Most presentations have the question section after the presenter has finished. Research presentations are different because they allow for questions during the presentation (assuming it is a presentation to a small group). If you get any questions in the middle of the presentation, it is not someone being rude, but simply a fellow researcher who is legitimately curious about your topic. Of course, there will be a question period after the presentation, but you may be asked questions during the presentation. If you read enough information on the topic, you should be able to answer any question easily, but if the question is completely unrelated to anything you read, then it is perfectly reasonable to answer that you did not research the specific area in question. Overall, the questions related to your presentation should not be your biggest worry, but you should definitely be ready.

These are not all the rules for a literature review presentation nor are they set in stone. These are just some tips that I was told or learned that were the most helpful for me, so I hope they will help you too. I had to rewrite my presentation entirely my first literature review because I did not understand some of these differences, so if you give the presentation when you are scheduled to go, you are already better off than I was. Also, do not be afraid to ask anyone in the research group, even Rosy, if you need help. Chances are everyone in the group has given a literature review presentation at some point, so we would be more than happy to help you if you are confused about something. That being said, we are not experts on your topic, so specific questions about organization and content are going to have to be figured out by yourself. Either way, no matter what you do, do not stress out about this presentation. The goal of the presentation is mostly just to help improve your knowledge on a topic, and the presentation is simply to share with the group some of the information you have learned. Best of luck with the presentation, and I hope these tips help clear up what exactly the goal of a literature review presentation in a research setting is.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• Browse Titles

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Lau F, Kuziemsky C, editors. Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach [Internet]. Victoria (BC): University of Victoria; 2017 Feb 27.

Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach [Internet].

Chapter 9 methods for literature reviews.

Guy Paré and Spyros Kitsiou .

9.1. Introduction

Literature reviews play a critical role in scholarship because science remains, first and foremost, a cumulative endeavour ( vom Brocke et al., 2009 ). As in any academic discipline, rigorous knowledge syntheses are becoming indispensable in keeping up with an exponentially growing eHealth literature, assisting practitioners, academics, and graduate students in finding, evaluating, and synthesizing the contents of many empirical and conceptual papers. Among other methods, literature reviews are essential for: (a) identifying what has been written on a subject or topic; (b) determining the extent to which a specific research area reveals any interpretable trends or patterns; (c) aggregating empirical findings related to a narrow research question to support evidence-based practice; (d) generating new frameworks and theories; and (e) identifying topics or questions requiring more investigation ( Paré, Trudel, Jaana, & Kitsiou, 2015 ).

Literature reviews can take two major forms. The most prevalent one is the “literature review” or “background” section within a journal paper or a chapter in a graduate thesis. This section synthesizes the extant literature and usually identifies the gaps in knowledge that the empirical study addresses ( Sylvester, Tate, & Johnstone, 2013 ). It may also provide a theoretical foundation for the proposed study, substantiate the presence of the research problem, justify the research as one that contributes something new to the cumulated knowledge, or validate the methods and approaches for the proposed study ( Hart, 1998 ; Levy & Ellis, 2006 ).

The second form of literature review, which is the focus of this chapter, constitutes an original and valuable work of research in and of itself ( Paré et al., 2015 ). Rather than providing a base for a researcher’s own work, it creates a solid starting point for all members of the community interested in a particular area or topic ( Mulrow, 1987 ). The so-called “review article” is a journal-length paper which has an overarching purpose to synthesize the literature in a field, without collecting or analyzing any primary data ( Green, Johnson, & Adams, 2006 ).

When appropriately conducted, review articles represent powerful information sources for practitioners looking for state-of-the art evidence to guide their decision-making and work practices ( Paré et al., 2015 ). Further, high-quality reviews become frequently cited pieces of work which researchers seek out as a first clear outline of the literature when undertaking empirical studies ( Cooper, 1988 ; Rowe, 2014 ). Scholars who track and gauge the impact of articles have found that review papers are cited and downloaded more often than any other type of published article ( Cronin, Ryan, & Coughlan, 2008 ; Montori, Wilczynski, Morgan, Haynes, & Hedges, 2003 ; Patsopoulos, Analatos, & Ioannidis, 2005 ). The reason for their popularity may be the fact that reading the review enables one to have an overview, if not a detailed knowledge of the area in question, as well as references to the most useful primary sources ( Cronin et al., 2008 ). Although they are not easy to conduct, the commitment to complete a review article provides a tremendous service to one’s academic community ( Paré et al., 2015 ; Petticrew & Roberts, 2006 ). Most, if not all, peer-reviewed journals in the fields of medical informatics publish review articles of some type.

The main objectives of this chapter are fourfold: (a) to provide an overview of the major steps and activities involved in conducting a stand-alone literature review; (b) to describe and contrast the different types of review articles that can contribute to the eHealth knowledge base; (c) to illustrate each review type with one or two examples from the eHealth literature; and (d) to provide a series of recommendations for prospective authors of review articles in this domain.

9.2. Overview of the Literature Review Process and Steps

As explained in Templier and Paré (2015) , there are six generic steps involved in conducting a review article:

• formulating the research question(s) and objective(s),
• searching the extant literature,
• screening for inclusion,
• assessing the quality of primary studies,
• extracting data, and
• analyzing data.

Although these steps are presented here in sequential order, one must keep in mind that the review process can be iterative and that many activities can be initiated during the planning stage and later refined during subsequent phases ( Finfgeld-Connett & Johnson, 2013 ; Kitchenham & Charters, 2007 ).

Formulating the research question(s) and objective(s): As a first step, members of the review team must appropriately justify the need for the review itself ( Petticrew & Roberts, 2006 ), identify the review’s main objective(s) ( Okoli & Schabram, 2010 ), and define the concepts or variables at the heart of their synthesis ( Cooper & Hedges, 2009 ; Webster & Watson, 2002 ). Importantly, they also need to articulate the research question(s) they propose to investigate ( Kitchenham & Charters, 2007 ). In this regard, we concur with Jesson, Matheson, and Lacey (2011) that clearly articulated research questions are key ingredients that guide the entire review methodology; they underscore the type of information that is needed, inform the search for and selection of relevant literature, and guide or orient the subsequent analysis. Searching the extant literature: The next step consists of searching the literature and making decisions about the suitability of material to be considered in the review ( Cooper, 1988 ). There exist three main coverage strategies. First, exhaustive coverage means an effort is made to be as comprehensive as possible in order to ensure that all relevant studies, published and unpublished, are included in the review and, thus, conclusions are based on this all-inclusive knowledge base. The second type of coverage consists of presenting materials that are representative of most other works in a given field or area. Often authors who adopt this strategy will search for relevant articles in a small number of top-tier journals in a field ( Paré et al., 2015 ). In the third strategy, the review team concentrates on prior works that have been central or pivotal to a particular topic. This may include empirical studies or conceptual papers that initiated a line of investigation, changed how problems or questions were framed, introduced new methods or concepts, or engendered important debate ( Cooper, 1988 ). Screening for inclusion: The following step consists of evaluating the applicability of the material identified in the preceding step ( Levy & Ellis, 2006 ; vom Brocke et al., 2009 ). Once a group of potential studies has been identified, members of the review team must screen them to determine their relevance ( Petticrew & Roberts, 2006 ). A set of predetermined rules provides a basis for including or excluding certain studies. This exercise requires a significant investment on the part of researchers, who must ensure enhanced objectivity and avoid biases or mistakes. As discussed later in this chapter, for certain types of reviews there must be at least two independent reviewers involved in the screening process and a procedure to resolve disagreements must also be in place ( Liberati et al., 2009 ; Shea et al., 2009 ). Assessing the quality of primary studies: In addition to screening material for inclusion, members of the review team may need to assess the scientific quality of the selected studies, that is, appraise the rigour of the research design and methods. Such formal assessment, which is usually conducted independently by at least two coders, helps members of the review team refine which studies to include in the final sample, determine whether or not the differences in quality may affect their conclusions, or guide how they analyze the data and interpret the findings ( Petticrew & Roberts, 2006 ). Ascribing quality scores to each primary study or considering through domain-based evaluations which study components have or have not been designed and executed appropriately makes it possible to reflect on the extent to which the selected study addresses possible biases and maximizes validity ( Shea et al., 2009 ). Extracting data: The following step involves gathering or extracting applicable information from each primary study included in the sample and deciding what is relevant to the problem of interest ( Cooper & Hedges, 2009 ). Indeed, the type of data that should be recorded mainly depends on the initial research questions ( Okoli & Schabram, 2010 ). However, important information may also be gathered about how, when, where and by whom the primary study was conducted, the research design and methods, or qualitative/quantitative results ( Cooper & Hedges, 2009 ). Analyzing and synthesizing data : As a final step, members of the review team must collate, summarize, aggregate, organize, and compare the evidence extracted from the included studies. The extracted data must be presented in a meaningful way that suggests a new contribution to the extant literature ( Jesson et al., 2011 ). Webster and Watson (2002) warn researchers that literature reviews should be much more than lists of papers and should provide a coherent lens to make sense of extant knowledge on a given topic. There exist several methods and techniques for synthesizing quantitative (e.g., frequency analysis, meta-analysis) and qualitative (e.g., grounded theory, narrative analysis, meta-ethnography) evidence ( Dixon-Woods, Agarwal, Jones, Young, & Sutton, 2005 ; Thomas & Harden, 2008 ).

9.3. Types of Review Articles and Brief Illustrations

EHealth researchers have at their disposal a number of approaches and methods for making sense out of existing literature, all with the purpose of casting current research findings into historical contexts or explaining contradictions that might exist among a set of primary research studies conducted on a particular topic. Our classification scheme is largely inspired from Paré and colleagues’ (2015) typology. Below we present and illustrate those review types that we feel are central to the growth and development of the eHealth domain.

9.3.1. Narrative Reviews

The narrative review is the “traditional” way of reviewing the extant literature and is skewed towards a qualitative interpretation of prior knowledge ( Sylvester et al., 2013 ). Put simply, a narrative review attempts to summarize or synthesize what has been written on a particular topic but does not seek generalization or cumulative knowledge from what is reviewed ( Davies, 2000 ; Green et al., 2006 ). Instead, the review team often undertakes the task of accumulating and synthesizing the literature to demonstrate the value of a particular point of view ( Baumeister & Leary, 1997 ). As such, reviewers may selectively ignore or limit the attention paid to certain studies in order to make a point. In this rather unsystematic approach, the selection of information from primary articles is subjective, lacks explicit criteria for inclusion and can lead to biased interpretations or inferences ( Green et al., 2006 ). There are several narrative reviews in the particular eHealth domain, as in all fields, which follow such an unstructured approach ( Silva et al., 2015 ; Paul et al., 2015 ).

Despite these criticisms, this type of review can be very useful in gathering together a volume of literature in a specific subject area and synthesizing it. As mentioned above, its primary purpose is to provide the reader with a comprehensive background for understanding current knowledge and highlighting the significance of new research ( Cronin et al., 2008 ). Faculty like to use narrative reviews in the classroom because they are often more up to date than textbooks, provide a single source for students to reference, and expose students to peer-reviewed literature ( Green et al., 2006 ). For researchers, narrative reviews can inspire research ideas by identifying gaps or inconsistencies in a body of knowledge, thus helping researchers to determine research questions or formulate hypotheses. Importantly, narrative reviews can also be used as educational articles to bring practitioners up to date with certain topics of issues ( Green et al., 2006 ).

Recently, there have been several efforts to introduce more rigour in narrative reviews that will elucidate common pitfalls and bring changes into their publication standards. Information systems researchers, among others, have contributed to advancing knowledge on how to structure a “traditional” review. For instance, Levy and Ellis (2006) proposed a generic framework for conducting such reviews. Their model follows the systematic data processing approach comprised of three steps, namely: (a) literature search and screening; (b) data extraction and analysis; and (c) writing the literature review. They provide detailed and very helpful instructions on how to conduct each step of the review process. As another methodological contribution, vom Brocke et al. (2009) offered a series of guidelines for conducting literature reviews, with a particular focus on how to search and extract the relevant body of knowledge. Last, Bandara, Miskon, and Fielt (2011) proposed a structured, predefined and tool-supported method to identify primary studies within a feasible scope, extract relevant content from identified articles, synthesize and analyze the findings, and effectively write and present the results of the literature review. We highly recommend that prospective authors of narrative reviews consult these useful sources before embarking on their work.

Darlow and Wen (2015) provide a good example of a highly structured narrative review in the eHealth field. These authors synthesized published articles that describe the development process of mobile health ( m-health ) interventions for patients’ cancer care self-management. As in most narrative reviews, the scope of the research questions being investigated is broad: (a) how development of these systems are carried out; (b) which methods are used to investigate these systems; and (c) what conclusions can be drawn as a result of the development of these systems. To provide clear answers to these questions, a literature search was conducted on six electronic databases and Google Scholar . The search was performed using several terms and free text words, combining them in an appropriate manner. Four inclusion and three exclusion criteria were utilized during the screening process. Both authors independently reviewed each of the identified articles to determine eligibility and extract study information. A flow diagram shows the number of studies identified, screened, and included or excluded at each stage of study selection. In terms of contributions, this review provides a series of practical recommendations for m-health intervention development.

9.3.2. Descriptive or Mapping Reviews

The primary goal of a descriptive review is to determine the extent to which a body of knowledge in a particular research topic reveals any interpretable pattern or trend with respect to pre-existing propositions, theories, methodologies or findings ( King & He, 2005 ; Paré et al., 2015 ). In contrast with narrative reviews, descriptive reviews follow a systematic and transparent procedure, including searching, screening and classifying studies ( Petersen, Vakkalanka, & Kuzniarz, 2015 ). Indeed, structured search methods are used to form a representative sample of a larger group of published works ( Paré et al., 2015 ). Further, authors of descriptive reviews extract from each study certain characteristics of interest, such as publication year, research methods, data collection techniques, and direction or strength of research outcomes (e.g., positive, negative, or non-significant) in the form of frequency analysis to produce quantitative results ( Sylvester et al., 2013 ). In essence, each study included in a descriptive review is treated as the unit of analysis and the published literature as a whole provides a database from which the authors attempt to identify any interpretable trends or draw overall conclusions about the merits of existing conceptualizations, propositions, methods or findings ( Paré et al., 2015 ). In doing so, a descriptive review may claim that its findings represent the state of the art in a particular domain ( King & He, 2005 ).

In the fields of health sciences and medical informatics, reviews that focus on examining the range, nature and evolution of a topic area are described by Anderson, Allen, Peckham, and Goodwin (2008) as mapping reviews . Like descriptive reviews, the research questions are generic and usually relate to publication patterns and trends. There is no preconceived plan to systematically review all of the literature although this can be done. Instead, researchers often present studies that are representative of most works published in a particular area and they consider a specific time frame to be mapped.

An example of this approach in the eHealth domain is offered by DeShazo, Lavallie, and Wolf (2009). The purpose of this descriptive or mapping review was to characterize publication trends in the medical informatics literature over a 20-year period (1987 to 2006). To achieve this ambitious objective, the authors performed a bibliometric analysis of medical informatics citations indexed in medline using publication trends, journal frequencies, impact factors, Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) term frequencies, and characteristics of citations. Findings revealed that there were over 77,000 medical informatics articles published during the covered period in numerous journals and that the average annual growth rate was 12%. The MeSH term analysis also suggested a strong interdisciplinary trend. Finally, average impact scores increased over time with two notable growth periods. Overall, patterns in research outputs that seem to characterize the historic trends and current components of the field of medical informatics suggest it may be a maturing discipline (DeShazo et al., 2009).

9.3.3. Scoping Reviews

Scoping reviews attempt to provide an initial indication of the potential size and nature of the extant literature on an emergent topic (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005; Daudt, van Mossel, & Scott, 2013 ; Levac, Colquhoun, & O’Brien, 2010). A scoping review may be conducted to examine the extent, range and nature of research activities in a particular area, determine the value of undertaking a full systematic review (discussed next), or identify research gaps in the extant literature ( Paré et al., 2015 ). In line with their main objective, scoping reviews usually conclude with the presentation of a detailed research agenda for future works along with potential implications for both practice and research.

Unlike narrative and descriptive reviews, the whole point of scoping the field is to be as comprehensive as possible, including grey literature (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005). Inclusion and exclusion criteria must be established to help researchers eliminate studies that are not aligned with the research questions. It is also recommended that at least two independent coders review abstracts yielded from the search strategy and then the full articles for study selection ( Daudt et al., 2013 ). The synthesized evidence from content or thematic analysis is relatively easy to present in tabular form (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005; Thomas & Harden, 2008 ).

One of the most highly cited scoping reviews in the eHealth domain was published by Archer, Fevrier-Thomas, Lokker, McKibbon, and Straus (2011) . These authors reviewed the existing literature on personal health record ( phr ) systems including design, functionality, implementation, applications, outcomes, and benefits. Seven databases were searched from 1985 to March 2010. Several search terms relating to phr s were used during this process. Two authors independently screened titles and abstracts to determine inclusion status. A second screen of full-text articles, again by two independent members of the research team, ensured that the studies described phr s. All in all, 130 articles met the criteria and their data were extracted manually into a database. The authors concluded that although there is a large amount of survey, observational, cohort/panel, and anecdotal evidence of phr benefits and satisfaction for patients, more research is needed to evaluate the results of phr implementations. Their in-depth analysis of the literature signalled that there is little solid evidence from randomized controlled trials or other studies through the use of phr s. Hence, they suggested that more research is needed that addresses the current lack of understanding of optimal functionality and usability of these systems, and how they can play a beneficial role in supporting patient self-management ( Archer et al., 2011 ).

9.3.4. Forms of Aggregative Reviews

Healthcare providers, practitioners, and policy-makers are nowadays overwhelmed with large volumes of information, including research-based evidence from numerous clinical trials and evaluation studies, assessing the effectiveness of health information technologies and interventions ( Ammenwerth & de Keizer, 2004 ; Deshazo et al., 2009 ). It is unrealistic to expect that all these disparate actors will have the time, skills, and necessary resources to identify the available evidence in the area of their expertise and consider it when making decisions. Systematic reviews that involve the rigorous application of scientific strategies aimed at limiting subjectivity and bias (i.e., systematic and random errors) can respond to this challenge.

Systematic reviews attempt to aggregate, appraise, and synthesize in a single source all empirical evidence that meet a set of previously specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a clearly formulated and often narrow research question on a particular topic of interest to support evidence-based practice ( Liberati et al., 2009 ). They adhere closely to explicit scientific principles ( Liberati et al., 2009 ) and rigorous methodological guidelines (Higgins & Green, 2008) aimed at reducing random and systematic errors that can lead to deviations from the truth in results or inferences. The use of explicit methods allows systematic reviews to aggregate a large body of research evidence, assess whether effects or relationships are in the same direction and of the same general magnitude, explain possible inconsistencies between study results, and determine the strength of the overall evidence for every outcome of interest based on the quality of included studies and the general consistency among them ( Cook, Mulrow, & Haynes, 1997 ). The main procedures of a systematic review involve:

• Formulating a review question and developing a search strategy based on explicit inclusion criteria for the identification of eligible studies (usually described in the context of a detailed review protocol).
• Searching for eligible studies using multiple databases and information sources, including grey literature sources, without any language restrictions.
• Selecting studies, extracting data, and assessing risk of bias in a duplicate manner using two independent reviewers to avoid random or systematic errors in the process.
• Analyzing data using quantitative or qualitative methods.
• Presenting results in summary of findings tables.
• Interpreting results and drawing conclusions.

Many systematic reviews, but not all, use statistical methods to combine the results of independent studies into a single quantitative estimate or summary effect size. Known as meta-analyses , these reviews use specific data extraction and statistical techniques (e.g., network, frequentist, or Bayesian meta-analyses) to calculate from each study by outcome of interest an effect size along with a confidence interval that reflects the degree of uncertainty behind the point estimate of effect ( Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009 ; Deeks, Higgins, & Altman, 2008 ). Subsequently, they use fixed or random-effects analysis models to combine the results of the included studies, assess statistical heterogeneity, and calculate a weighted average of the effect estimates from the different studies, taking into account their sample sizes. The summary effect size is a value that reflects the average magnitude of the intervention effect for a particular outcome of interest or, more generally, the strength of a relationship between two variables across all studies included in the systematic review. By statistically combining data from multiple studies, meta-analyses can create more precise and reliable estimates of intervention effects than those derived from individual studies alone, when these are examined independently as discrete sources of information.

The review by Gurol-Urganci, de Jongh, Vodopivec-Jamsek, Atun, and Car (2013) on the effects of mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments is an illustrative example of a high-quality systematic review with meta-analysis. Missed appointments are a major cause of inefficiency in healthcare delivery with substantial monetary costs to health systems. These authors sought to assess whether mobile phone-based appointment reminders delivered through Short Message Service ( sms ) or Multimedia Messaging Service ( mms ) are effective in improving rates of patient attendance and reducing overall costs. To this end, they conducted a comprehensive search on multiple databases using highly sensitive search strategies without language or publication-type restrictions to identify all rct s that are eligible for inclusion. In order to minimize the risk of omitting eligible studies not captured by the original search, they supplemented all electronic searches with manual screening of trial registers and references contained in the included studies. Study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessments were performed inde­­pen­dently by two coders using standardized methods to ensure consistency and to eliminate potential errors. Findings from eight rct s involving 6,615 participants were pooled into meta-analyses to calculate the magnitude of effects that mobile text message reminders have on the rate of attendance at healthcare appointments compared to no reminders and phone call reminders.

Meta-analyses are regarded as powerful tools for deriving meaningful conclusions. However, there are situations in which it is neither reasonable nor appropriate to pool studies together using meta-analytic methods simply because there is extensive clinical heterogeneity between the included studies or variation in measurement tools, comparisons, or outcomes of interest. In these cases, systematic reviews can use qualitative synthesis methods such as vote counting, content analysis, classification schemes and tabulations, as an alternative approach to narratively synthesize the results of the independent studies included in the review. This form of review is known as qualitative systematic review.

A rigorous example of one such review in the eHealth domain is presented by Mickan, Atherton, Roberts, Heneghan, and Tilson (2014) on the use of handheld computers by healthcare professionals and their impact on access to information and clinical decision-making. In line with the methodological guide­lines for systematic reviews, these authors: (a) developed and registered with prospero ( www.crd.york.ac.uk/ prospero / ) an a priori review protocol; (b) conducted comprehensive searches for eligible studies using multiple databases and other supplementary strategies (e.g., forward searches); and (c) subsequently carried out study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessments in a duplicate manner to eliminate potential errors in the review process. Heterogeneity between the included studies in terms of reported outcomes and measures precluded the use of meta-analytic methods. To this end, the authors resorted to using narrative analysis and synthesis to describe the effectiveness of handheld computers on accessing information for clinical knowledge, adherence to safety and clinical quality guidelines, and diagnostic decision-making.

In recent years, the number of systematic reviews in the field of health informatics has increased considerably. Systematic reviews with discordant findings can cause great confusion and make it difficult for decision-makers to interpret the review-level evidence ( Moher, 2013 ). Therefore, there is a growing need for appraisal and synthesis of prior systematic reviews to ensure that decision-making is constantly informed by the best available accumulated evidence. Umbrella reviews , also known as overviews of systematic reviews, are tertiary types of evidence synthesis that aim to accomplish this; that is, they aim to compare and contrast findings from multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses ( Becker & Oxman, 2008 ). Umbrella reviews generally adhere to the same principles and rigorous methodological guidelines used in systematic reviews. However, the unit of analysis in umbrella reviews is the systematic review rather than the primary study ( Becker & Oxman, 2008 ). Unlike systematic reviews that have a narrow focus of inquiry, umbrella reviews focus on broader research topics for which there are several potential interventions ( Smith, Devane, Begley, & Clarke, 2011 ). A recent umbrella review on the effects of home telemonitoring interventions for patients with heart failure critically appraised, compared, and synthesized evidence from 15 systematic reviews to investigate which types of home telemonitoring technologies and forms of interventions are more effective in reducing mortality and hospital admissions ( Kitsiou, Paré, & Jaana, 2015 ).

9.3.5. Realist Reviews

Realist reviews are theory-driven interpretative reviews developed to inform, enhance, or supplement conventional systematic reviews by making sense of heterogeneous evidence about complex interventions applied in diverse contexts in a way that informs policy decision-making ( Greenhalgh, Wong, Westhorp, & Pawson, 2011 ). They originated from criticisms of positivist systematic reviews which centre on their “simplistic” underlying assumptions ( Oates, 2011 ). As explained above, systematic reviews seek to identify causation. Such logic is appropriate for fields like medicine and education where findings of randomized controlled trials can be aggregated to see whether a new treatment or intervention does improve outcomes. However, many argue that it is not possible to establish such direct causal links between interventions and outcomes in fields such as social policy, management, and information systems where for any intervention there is unlikely to be a regular or consistent outcome ( Oates, 2011 ; Pawson, 2006 ; Rousseau, Manning, & Denyer, 2008 ).

To circumvent these limitations, Pawson, Greenhalgh, Harvey, and Walshe (2005) have proposed a new approach for synthesizing knowledge that seeks to unpack the mechanism of how “complex interventions” work in particular contexts. The basic research question — what works? — which is usually associated with systematic reviews changes to: what is it about this intervention that works, for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and why? Realist reviews have no particular preference for either quantitative or qualitative evidence. As a theory-building approach, a realist review usually starts by articulating likely underlying mechanisms and then scrutinizes available evidence to find out whether and where these mechanisms are applicable ( Shepperd et al., 2009 ). Primary studies found in the extant literature are viewed as case studies which can test and modify the initial theories ( Rousseau et al., 2008 ).

The main objective pursued in the realist review conducted by Otte-Trojel, de Bont, Rundall, and van de Klundert (2014) was to examine how patient portals contribute to health service delivery and patient outcomes. The specific goals were to investigate how outcomes are produced and, most importantly, how variations in outcomes can be explained. The research team started with an exploratory review of background documents and research studies to identify ways in which patient portals may contribute to health service delivery and patient outcomes. The authors identified six main ways which represent “educated guesses” to be tested against the data in the evaluation studies. These studies were identified through a formal and systematic search in four databases between 2003 and 2013. Two members of the research team selected the articles using a pre-established list of inclusion and exclusion criteria and following a two-step procedure. The authors then extracted data from the selected articles and created several tables, one for each outcome category. They organized information to bring forward those mechanisms where patient portals contribute to outcomes and the variation in outcomes across different contexts.

9.3.6. Critical Reviews

Lastly, critical reviews aim to provide a critical evaluation and interpretive analysis of existing literature on a particular topic of interest to reveal strengths, weaknesses, contradictions, controversies, inconsistencies, and/or other important issues with respect to theories, hypotheses, research methods or results ( Baumeister & Leary, 1997 ; Kirkevold, 1997 ). Unlike other review types, critical reviews attempt to take a reflective account of the research that has been done in a particular area of interest, and assess its credibility by using appraisal instruments or critical interpretive methods. In this way, critical reviews attempt to constructively inform other scholars about the weaknesses of prior research and strengthen knowledge development by giving focus and direction to studies for further improvement ( Kirkevold, 1997 ).

Kitsiou, Paré, and Jaana (2013) provide an example of a critical review that assessed the methodological quality of prior systematic reviews of home telemonitoring studies for chronic patients. The authors conducted a comprehensive search on multiple databases to identify eligible reviews and subsequently used a validated instrument to conduct an in-depth quality appraisal. Results indicate that the majority of systematic reviews in this particular area suffer from important methodological flaws and biases that impair their internal validity and limit their usefulness for clinical and decision-making purposes. To this end, they provide a number of recommendations to strengthen knowledge development towards improving the design and execution of future reviews on home telemonitoring.

9.4. Summary

Table 9.1 outlines the main types of literature reviews that were described in the previous sub-sections and summarizes the main characteristics that distinguish one review type from another. It also includes key references to methodological guidelines and useful sources that can be used by eHealth scholars and researchers for planning and developing reviews.

Typology of Literature Reviews (adapted from Paré et al., 2015).

As shown in Table 9.1 , each review type addresses different kinds of research questions or objectives, which subsequently define and dictate the methods and approaches that need to be used to achieve the overarching goal(s) of the review. For example, in the case of narrative reviews, there is greater flexibility in searching and synthesizing articles ( Green et al., 2006 ). Researchers are often relatively free to use a diversity of approaches to search, identify, and select relevant scientific articles, describe their operational characteristics, present how the individual studies fit together, and formulate conclusions. On the other hand, systematic reviews are characterized by their high level of systematicity, rigour, and use of explicit methods, based on an “a priori” review plan that aims to minimize bias in the analysis and synthesis process (Higgins & Green, 2008). Some reviews are exploratory in nature (e.g., scoping/mapping reviews), whereas others may be conducted to discover patterns (e.g., descriptive reviews) or involve a synthesis approach that may include the critical analysis of prior research ( Paré et al., 2015 ). Hence, in order to select the most appropriate type of review, it is critical to know before embarking on a review project, why the research synthesis is conducted and what type of methods are best aligned with the pursued goals.

9.5. Concluding Remarks

In light of the increased use of evidence-based practice and research generating stronger evidence ( Grady et al., 2011 ; Lyden et al., 2013 ), review articles have become essential tools for summarizing, synthesizing, integrating or critically appraising prior knowledge in the eHealth field. As mentioned earlier, when rigorously conducted review articles represent powerful information sources for eHealth scholars and practitioners looking for state-of-the-art evidence. The typology of literature reviews we used herein will allow eHealth researchers, graduate students and practitioners to gain a better understanding of the similarities and differences between review types.

We must stress that this classification scheme does not privilege any specific type of review as being of higher quality than another ( Paré et al., 2015 ). As explained above, each type of review has its own strengths and limitations. Having said that, we realize that the methodological rigour of any review — be it qualitative, quantitative or mixed — is a critical aspect that should be considered seriously by prospective authors. In the present context, the notion of rigour refers to the reliability and validity of the review process described in section 9.2. For one thing, reliability is related to the reproducibility of the review process and steps, which is facilitated by a comprehensive documentation of the literature search process, extraction, coding and analysis performed in the review. Whether the search is comprehensive or not, whether it involves a methodical approach for data extraction and synthesis or not, it is important that the review documents in an explicit and transparent manner the steps and approach that were used in the process of its development. Next, validity characterizes the degree to which the review process was conducted appropriately. It goes beyond documentation and reflects decisions related to the selection of the sources, the search terms used, the period of time covered, the articles selected in the search, and the application of backward and forward searches ( vom Brocke et al., 2009 ). In short, the rigour of any review article is reflected by the explicitness of its methods (i.e., transparency) and the soundness of the approach used. We refer those interested in the concepts of rigour and quality to the work of Templier and Paré (2015) which offers a detailed set of methodological guidelines for conducting and evaluating various types of review articles.

To conclude, our main objective in this chapter was to demystify the various types of literature reviews that are central to the continuous development of the eHealth field. It is our hope that our descriptive account will serve as a valuable source for those conducting, evaluating or using reviews in this important and growing domain.

• Ammenwerth E., de Keizer N. An inventory of evaluation studies of information technology in health care. Trends in evaluation research, 1982-2002. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 2004; 44 (1):44–56. [ PubMed : 15778794 ]
• Anderson S., Allen P., Peckham S., Goodwin N. Asking the right questions: scoping studies in the commissioning of research on the organisation and delivery of health services. Health Research Policy and Systems. 2008; 6 (7):1–12. [ PMC free article : PMC2500008 ] [ PubMed : 18613961 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Archer N., Fevrier-Thomas U., Lokker C., McKibbon K. A., Straus S.E. Personal health records: a scoping review. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. 2011; 18 (4):515–522. [ PMC free article : PMC3128401 ] [ PubMed : 21672914 ]
• Arksey H., O’Malley L. Scoping studies: towards a methodological framework. International Journal of Social Research Methodology. 2005; 8 (1):19–32.
• A systematic, tool-supported method for conducting literature reviews in information systems. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 19th European Conference on Information Systems ( ecis 2011); June 9 to 11; Helsinki, Finland. 2011.
• Baumeister R. F., Leary M.R. Writing narrative literature reviews. Review of General Psychology. 1997; 1 (3):311–320.
• Becker L. A., Oxman A.D. In: Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions. Higgins J. P. T., Green S., editors. Hoboken, nj : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2008. Overviews of reviews; pp. 607–631.
• Borenstein M., Hedges L., Higgins J., Rothstein H. Introduction to meta-analysis. Hoboken, nj : John Wiley & Sons Inc; 2009.
• Cook D. J., Mulrow C. D., Haynes B. Systematic reviews: Synthesis of best evidence for clinical decisions. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1997; 126 (5):376–380. [ PubMed : 9054282 ]
• Cooper H., Hedges L.V. In: The handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis. 2nd ed. Cooper H., Hedges L. V., Valentine J. C., editors. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; 2009. Research synthesis as a scientific process; pp. 3–17.
• Cooper H. M. Organizing knowledge syntheses: A taxonomy of literature reviews. Knowledge in Society. 1988; 1 (1):104–126.
• Cronin P., Ryan F., Coughlan M. Undertaking a literature review: a step-by-step approach. British Journal of Nursing. 2008; 17 (1):38–43. [ PubMed : 18399395 ]
• Darlow S., Wen K.Y. Development testing of mobile health interventions for cancer patient self-management: A review. Health Informatics Journal. 2015 (online before print). [ PubMed : 25916831 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Daudt H. M., van Mossel C., Scott S.J. Enhancing the scoping study methodology: a large, inter-professional team’s experience with Arksey and O’Malley’s framework. bmc Medical Research Methodology. 2013; 13 :48. [ PMC free article : PMC3614526 ] [ PubMed : 23522333 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Davies P. The relevance of systematic reviews to educational policy and practice. Oxford Review of Education. 2000; 26 (3-4):365–378.
• Deeks J. J., Higgins J. P. T., Altman D.G. In: Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions. Higgins J. P. T., Green S., editors. Hoboken, nj : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2008. Analysing data and undertaking meta-analyses; pp. 243–296.
• Deshazo J. P., Lavallie D. L., Wolf F.M. Publication trends in the medical informatics literature: 20 years of “Medical Informatics” in mesh . bmc Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 2009; 9 :7. [ PMC free article : PMC2652453 ] [ PubMed : 19159472 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Dixon-Woods M., Agarwal S., Jones D., Young B., Sutton A. Synthesising qualitative and quantitative evidence: a review of possible methods. Journal of Health Services Research and Policy. 2005; 10 (1):45–53. [ PubMed : 15667704 ]
• Finfgeld-Connett D., Johnson E.D. Literature search strategies for conducting knowledge-building and theory-generating qualitative systematic reviews. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 2013; 69 (1):194–204. [ PMC free article : PMC3424349 ] [ PubMed : 22591030 ]
• Grady B., Myers K. M., Nelson E. L., Belz N., Bennett L., Carnahan L. … Guidelines Working Group. Evidence-based practice for telemental health. Telemedicine Journal and E Health. 2011; 17 (2):131–148. [ PubMed : 21385026 ]
• Green B. N., Johnson C. D., Adams A. Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals: secrets of the trade. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. 2006; 5 (3):101–117. [ PMC free article : PMC2647067 ] [ PubMed : 19674681 ]
• Greenhalgh T., Wong G., Westhorp G., Pawson R. Protocol–realist and meta-narrative evidence synthesis: evolving standards ( rameses ). bmc Medical Research Methodology. 2011; 11 :115. [ PMC free article : PMC3173389 ] [ PubMed : 21843376 ]
• Gurol-Urganci I., de Jongh T., Vodopivec-Jamsek V., Atun R., Car J. Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments. Cochrane Database System Review. 2013; 12 cd 007458. [ PMC free article : PMC6485985 ] [ PubMed : 24310741 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hart C. Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science research imagination. London: SAGE Publications; 1998.
• Higgins J. P. T., Green S., editors. Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions: Cochrane book series. Hoboken, nj : Wiley-Blackwell; 2008.
• Jesson J., Matheson L., Lacey F.M. Doing your literature review: traditional and systematic techniques. Los Angeles & London: SAGE Publications; 2011.
• King W. R., He J. Understanding the role and methods of meta-analysis in IS research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 2005; 16 :1.
• Kirkevold M. Integrative nursing research — an important strategy to further the development of nursing science and nursing practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 1997; 25 (5):977–984. [ PubMed : 9147203 ]
• Kitchenham B., Charters S. ebse Technical Report Version 2.3. Keele & Durham. uk : Keele University & University of Durham; 2007. Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering.
• Kitsiou S., Paré G., Jaana M. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of home telemonitoring interventions for patients with chronic diseases: a critical assessment of their methodological quality. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2013; 15 (7):e150. [ PMC free article : PMC3785977 ] [ PubMed : 23880072 ]
• Kitsiou S., Paré G., Jaana M. Effects of home telemonitoring interventions on patients with chronic heart failure: an overview of systematic reviews. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2015; 17 (3):e63. [ PMC free article : PMC4376138 ] [ PubMed : 25768664 ]
• Levac D., Colquhoun H., O’Brien K. K. Scoping studies: advancing the methodology. Implementation Science. 2010; 5 (1):69. [ PMC free article : PMC2954944 ] [ PubMed : 20854677 ]
• Levy Y., Ellis T.J. A systems approach to conduct an effective literature review in support of information systems research. Informing Science. 2006; 9 :181–211.
• Liberati A., Altman D. G., Tetzlaff J., Mulrow C., Gøtzsche P. C., Ioannidis J. P. A. et al. Moher D. The prisma statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: Explanation and elaboration. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2009; 151 (4):W-65. [ PubMed : 19622512 ]
• Lyden J. R., Zickmund S. L., Bhargava T. D., Bryce C. L., Conroy M. B., Fischer G. S. et al. McTigue K. M. Implementing health information technology in a patient-centered manner: Patient experiences with an online evidence-based lifestyle intervention. Journal for Healthcare Quality. 2013; 35 (5):47–57. [ PubMed : 24004039 ]
• Mickan S., Atherton H., Roberts N. W., Heneghan C., Tilson J.K. Use of handheld computers in clinical practice: a systematic review. bmc Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 2014; 14 :56. [ PMC free article : PMC4099138 ] [ PubMed : 24998515 ]
• Moher D. The problem of duplicate systematic reviews. British Medical Journal. 2013; 347 (5040) [ PubMed : 23945367 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Montori V. M., Wilczynski N. L., Morgan D., Haynes R. B., Hedges T. Systematic reviews: a cross-sectional study of location and citation counts. bmc Medicine. 2003; 1 :2. [ PMC free article : PMC281591 ] [ PubMed : 14633274 ]
• Mulrow C. D. The medical review article: state of the science. Annals of Internal Medicine. 1987; 106 (3):485–488. [ PubMed : 3813259 ] [ CrossRef ]
• Evidence-based information systems: A decade later. Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems ; 2011. Retrieved from http://aisel ​.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent ​.cgi?article ​=1221&context ​=ecis2011 .
• Okoli C., Schabram K. A guide to conducting a systematic literature review of information systems research. ssrn Electronic Journal. 2010
• Otte-Trojel T., de Bont A., Rundall T. G., van de Klundert J. How outcomes are achieved through patient portals: a realist review. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. 2014; 21 (4):751–757. [ PMC free article : PMC4078283 ] [ PubMed : 24503882 ]
• Paré G., Trudel M.-C., Jaana M., Kitsiou S. Synthesizing information systems knowledge: A typology of literature reviews. Information & Management. 2015; 52 (2):183–199.
• Patsopoulos N. A., Analatos A. A., Ioannidis J.P. A. Relative citation impact of various study designs in the health sciences. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2005; 293 (19):2362–2366. [ PubMed : 15900006 ]
• Paul M. M., Greene C. M., Newton-Dame R., Thorpe L. E., Perlman S. E., McVeigh K. H., Gourevitch M.N. The state of population health surveillance using electronic health records: A narrative review. Population Health Management. 2015; 18 (3):209–216. [ PubMed : 25608033 ]
• Pawson R. Evidence-based policy: a realist perspective. London: SAGE Publications; 2006.
• Pawson R., Greenhalgh T., Harvey G., Walshe K. Realist review—a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy. 2005; 10 (Suppl 1):21–34. [ PubMed : 16053581 ]
• Petersen K., Vakkalanka S., Kuzniarz L. Guidelines for conducting systematic mapping studies in software engineering: An update. Information and Software Technology. 2015; 64 :1–18.
• Petticrew M., Roberts H. Systematic reviews in the social sciences: A practical guide. Malden, ma : Blackwell Publishing Co; 2006.
• Rousseau D. M., Manning J., Denyer D. Evidence in management and organizational science: Assembling the field’s full weight of scientific knowledge through syntheses. The Academy of Management Annals. 2008; 2 (1):475–515.
• Rowe F. What literature review is not: diversity, boundaries and recommendations. European Journal of Information Systems. 2014; 23 (3):241–255.
• Shea B. J., Hamel C., Wells G. A., Bouter L. M., Kristjansson E., Grimshaw J. et al. Boers M. amstar is a reliable and valid measurement tool to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. 2009; 62 (10):1013–1020. [ PubMed : 19230606 ]
• Shepperd S., Lewin S., Straus S., Clarke M., Eccles M. P., Fitzpatrick R. et al. Sheikh A. Can we systematically review studies that evaluate complex interventions? PLoS Medicine. 2009; 6 (8):e1000086. [ PMC free article : PMC2717209 ] [ PubMed : 19668360 ]
• Silva B. M., Rodrigues J. J., de la Torre Díez I., López-Coronado M., Saleem K. Mobile-health: A review of current state in 2015. Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 2015; 56 :265–272. [ PubMed : 26071682 ]
• Smith V., Devane D., Begley C., Clarke M. Methodology in conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews of healthcare interventions. bmc Medical Research Methodology. 2011; 11 (1):15. [ PMC free article : PMC3039637 ] [ PubMed : 21291558 ]
• Sylvester A., Tate M., Johnstone D. Beyond synthesis: re-presenting heterogeneous research literature. Behaviour & Information Technology. 2013; 32 (12):1199–1215.
• Templier M., Paré G. A framework for guiding and evaluating literature reviews. Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 2015; 37 (6):112–137.
• Thomas J., Harden A. Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research in systematic reviews. bmc Medical Research Methodology. 2008; 8 (1):45. [ PMC free article : PMC2478656 ] [ PubMed : 18616818 ]
• Reconstructing the giant: on the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 17th European Conference on Information Systems ( ecis 2009); Verona, Italy. 2009.
• Webster J., Watson R.T. Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature review. Management Information Systems Quarterly. 2002; 26 (2):11.
• Whitlock E. P., Lin J. S., Chou R., Shekelle P., Robinson K.A. Using existing systematic reviews in complex systematic reviews. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2008; 148 (10):776–782. [ PubMed : 18490690 ]

This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0): see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

• Cite this Page Paré G, Kitsiou S. Chapter 9 Methods for Literature Reviews. In: Lau F, Kuziemsky C, editors. Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach [Internet]. Victoria (BC): University of Victoria; 2017 Feb 27.
• PDF version of this title (4.5M)
• Disable Glossary Links

In this Page

• Introduction
• Overview of the Literature Review Process and Steps
• Types of Review Articles and Brief Illustrations
• Concluding Remarks

Related information

• PMC PubMed Central citations
• PubMed Links to PubMed

Recent Activity

• Chapter 9 Methods for Literature Reviews - Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Ev... Chapter 9 Methods for Literature Reviews - Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach

Your browsing activity is empty.

Activity recording is turned off.

Turn recording back on

Connect with NLM

National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894

Web Policies FOIA HHS Vulnerability Disclosure

Help Accessibility Careers