Identifying factors that contribute to speaking anxiety among Kuantan Community College students in ESL classroom

Abstract

Speaking anxiety brings impacts on the learning process because it affects fluency and also the communication process itself. There are many kinds of research done to analyse the speaking anxiety issue and to clarify the factors that contribute to speaking anxiety. This study aimed to identify the contributing factors affecting speaking anxiety among Kuantan Community College students. This study involved all semester one students (91 students) in Kuantan Community College who have registered for SUE 10011 Communicative English course. A quantitative method was employed to analyze the data. The main instrument used to gather the quantitative data is the FLCAS (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) which was adapted from a study done by Horwitz and Cope (1986). In the questionnaire, there are 33 items that were divided into 3 factors related to speaking anxiety but for this study 28 questions from FLCAS were adopted with minor adaptation to suit the objectives of the study. The 3 factors which were analyzed in this study are the motivation in learning ESL, fear of negative evaluation and English language proficiency. The data gathered were analyzed using the SPSS software. This study revealed that these 3 factors are very important to determine the anxiety level among the ESL learners. This study suggests that with appropriate teaching methodology and more effective learning environment will help the ESL learners to deal with their anxiety in speaking English language. This study will help the ESL lecturers to know in detail regarding the factors that contribute to speaking anxiety. The lecturers will have the guide to provide an action plan to curb with the problem and at the same time improvise their teaching methods. For future studies related to speaking anxiety, it is better if the researchers could identify effective teaching methodology or techniques on teaching speaking skills. It is hope that with further studies on this issue and with larger scale of respondents will further improved and bring dimensional perceptions towards the language lecturer and the ESL students