Gaze and facial expression in engineering student presentations: a comparative case study of a high- and low-performing presenter

• Main Author: Lee, Jean Choong Peng
• Other Authors: School of Humanities
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Language; Gaze; Facial Expression; Engineering Student Presentation; Multimodality; ESP/EAP Spoken Discourse
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/164426
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Gaze and facial expression are non-verbal communicative modes that help presenters to reinforce their verbal messages and perform communicative functions to meet oral presentation goals. However, there are limited studies on how gaze and facial expression are used in engineering student presentations, especially in areas related to their occurrence, frequency, and duration incurred during delivery. This case study used multimodal discourse analysis and coding statistics to compare the ways gaze and facial expression were used by two engineering students who scored the highest and lowest marks in an engineering presentation assessment. The findings showed the high-performing presenter used comparatively lesser gaze fixation shifts and longer durations of direct and sustained gaze at the audience during her delivery when compared to the low-performing presenter. Serious and smiling facial expressions were used predominantly throughout the presentation by the high-performing presenter, as compared to the low-performing presenter who used mostly neutral facial expressions. It was concluded that the high-performing presenter used gaze and facial expression more successfully to perform communicative functions to emphasise co-occurring verbal messages, evaluate and promote her product, foster a competent impression, and establish rapport with the audience.