Speaking Anxiety Among EFL Students

Abstract

English becomes an increasingly common international language for communication. It's difficult to study English in a place where it has become a foreign language, like Indonesia. Therefore, the writer decided to investigate three research problems; how is the level of speaking anxiety, identifying whether a significant difference in speaking anxiety levels between male and female students and to find out whether differ significantly speaking anxiety levels depend on their level of proficiency. This study was carried out by using quantitative research and adopted a Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) questionnaire designed by Horwitz & Cope (1986) as the instrument. The participants of this study were 47 third-semester English students at Universitas Islam Malang consisting of 14 male students and 33 female students. Mean and standard deviation was used to find out the level of speaking anxiety, an independent t-test was carried out to identify whether differ significantly across gender, and ANOVA was used to determine whether speaking anxiety differ significantly depending on proficiency level. The result of this study reveals that the average score of speaking anxiety was categorized as middly anxious (M=102.30). Moreover, the writers found that there is no significant difference level of speaking anxiety between male and female students. The last finding of this study concludes that there is no significant difference in speaking anxiety level on proficiency level. The pedagogical implications of this study put the teacher as a facilitator to help the students less their speaking anxiety, such as making a speaking classroom fun or creating the classroom situation less competitive. Keywords: Speaking Anxiety, FLCAS, Gender, Proficiency