JOURNAL ANGLO-SAXON VOL. VIII NO.

1 (2017) ISSN: 2301 5292

An Analysis of Students’ Anxiety in Speaking

Uli Modesta Siagian1, Adam2

English Education Department

University of RiauKepulauan
ulimodestasiagian@yahoo.co.id1, ayamezhu@yahoo.com2

Abstract

This thesis aims to define the factors of students’ speaking anxiety and how the students’
strategies to overcome speaking anxiety in the class room. The problem in this research is
anxiety of tenth grade students SMK Indomalay School Batam to speak in classroom.
Based on the issues above, the purpose of this researcher is to define the factor causing of
speaking anxiety and how the students' strategies to overcome speaking anxiety. This
research is qualitative descriptive. The subject in this study is tenth grade of SMK
Indomalay School Batam in Academic year 2015/2016. The totally number is 22 students.
The data collected by Interview and questionnaire. The results showed that the factor
causing of the students' speaking anxiety to speak in the language classroom are: lack of
familiarity of task, fear of making mistakes, low motivation, incomprehensible inputs, lack
of confidence and then low English proficiency. And the student’s strategies to overcome
speaking anxiety were peer seeking, preparation, relaxation, positive thinking and
resignation.

Keywords: students’ anxiety, speaking

INTRODUCTION

Speaking is the way to use language to communicate each other. By speaking,

people around the world deliveries information and let the other people to know what the
speaker talks about, it means that speaking is common activities in daily life and to
communicate through speaking that contain interaction between speaker and listener.
Speaking is the product of creative contraction of linguistic strings; the speaker
makes choices of lexicon, the structure and discourse. Speaking in language needs words to
develop to be sentence and needs structure in language and the information that speaker giver
acceptable and understood by listener.
By speaking the students have opportunity to delivery what the students want to
inform to the listener. Without willingness to speak English, the successful language learner

3
Uli Modesta Siagian et al ., An Analysis of Students’ Anxiety in Speaking (03-09)

will not be reached by the students, but some students especially from SMK Indomalay
School were anxiety to speak English in classroom.
During teaching practice program, the researcher found that students were afraid of
delivering the student’s ideas and also base on the teacher information about anxiety in
speaking. The students of SMK Indomalay School Batam considered speaking as difficult
skill to learn. Students did not willingness to speaking English in front of the class.
The students’ problem in learning English were; there were many students lack of
vocabularies, some of the students seldom to practice in speaking and some of the students
were difficulty in pronunciation. The students need a confidence to speak in front of the
class, but some of students had an anxiety when speak in classroom.

Based on Liu (2006:23), there are some causes of reticence (Anxiety to speak
English), they are:

a. Low English proficiency

Low English proficiency is also identified in the present research as a major factor
that hindered the students from talking to others in English in class. Thus, students may
feel weak in speaking English, perceived their English to be poor, and may feel that the
others is better than him or her.

b. Lack of familiarity of task

The word familiar means well known, often seen or heard, having a good
knowledge, close or friendly to something. Interest mattered a lot in students` active
participation in classroom activities. In short, students will active in speaking about a
topic if she or he is interest, well known, often see or heard, having a good knowledge or
even close or friendly to a topic.

c. Lack of confidence
Confidence means having strong beliefs, firm trust, or sure expectation, feeling
certain, fully assure, having no failure, etc. Some students might good have
pronunciation and be at a high proficiency level but they still preferred to be reticent
because of the lack of courage.
JOURNAL ANGLO-SAXON VOL. VIII NO. 1 (2017) ISSN: 2301 5292

d. Fear of making mistakes

The students worried about losing face in oral language classroom. Students keep
quiet and wait until they were required to speak English, it was because the students
were afraid and feel embarrassment of making mistakes.

e. Incomprehensible inputs
Language input comes in the form of teacher talk, listening activities, reading
passages, and the language heard and read outside of class. It gives learners the material
they need to begin producing language themselves.

There are five main categories of strategies as follow below:

1. Preparation
The students have use strategy to increase students’ subjectively estimated
mastery of the subject matter, and hence reduce the students’ speaking anxiety in the
classroom even in front of the teacher and other students.

2. Relaxation
Involves tactic that aim at reducing somatic anxiety symptoms of the students,
with relaxation the students feel more calm done when anxiety appear.

3. Positive thinking
The students also have to use this strategy because this strategy is intended to
divert attention from the stressful situation to positive and pleasant cues, and bring
relief to the students’ anxiety in speaking.

4. Peer seeking
Peer seeking is distinguished by students’ willingness to look for other students
who seem to have trouble understanding the class and controlling students’ anxiety.
For the students’ anxiety, the realization that others are having the same problem may
serve as a source of emotional regulation by social comparison.

5
Uli Modesta Siagian et al ., An Analysis of Students’ Anxiety in Speaking (03-09)

5. Resignation
This category is characterized by students’ reluctance to do anything to alleviate
the students speaking anxiety. The students reporting examples of resignation seem
intent on minimizing the impact of anxiety by refusing to face the problem.
Johnston (2006:6) states some of the people get so anxious about making a
mistake that the people’s anxiety get out of control when speaking or performing in
public. It means that actually people can solve anxiety by themselves.
According to Arikunto (2010:268) states mostly some of researcher did research
by questionnaire to collect the data. The researcher gets information to reach
researcher’s aim by give the questionnaire to the students. Questionnaire is a
collection of questions of the research to respondents to be answered. The
characteristic of questionnaire is collecting data through list of written questions that
are arranged and distributed to get information or explanation from score of data.

Moreover, Sugiyono (2014: 145) states that questionnaire is collecting data with
efficient if researchers know for certain variables to be measured and know what is
expected by.
Then, Riduwan (2012:20) states that a Likert scale is ask participants to respond a
series of statement, namely strong agree (SA), agree (A), undecided (U), disagree (D),
or strongly disagree (SD) with each statement. Indonesian language, strongly agree or
sangatsetuju (SS), agree or setuju (S), undecided or ragu-ragu (RR), disagree or
tidaksetuju (TS) and strongly disagree or sangat tidaksetuju (STS). The items of
questionnaire used indonesian language to help the respondents to comprehend the
items.

METHODOLOGY

The method of this research is descriptive qualitative research. The descriptive

research involved collecting data in order to answer the question concerning with the status
of the subject of the study.Qualitative research is the study intends to understand the
phenomenon of what is experienced by the subject of the research. Such as motivation,
perception, behavior, etc, in a holistic manner. The description is in the form of words and
language, in a specific context naturally and by utilizing a variety of natural methods.
JOURNAL ANGLO-SAXON VOL. VIII NO. 1 (2017) ISSN: 2301 5292

Dealing with the theory, this research concerned with factors causing students` anxiety to
speak English in language classroom.

RESULTS

The researcher gave questionnaire to 22 students, there were 5 (five) indicators with
10 items to known the factor causing of the students’ speaking anxiety. Then, the researcher
did interview there were 5 indicators with 10 questions to known the strategies of the
students to overcome speaking anxiety. The interview between the researcher and students
was done individually and pair. When did interview, the researcher used certain an interview
guide, but in unstructured question.

Based on the data that collected by questionnaire, the researcher stated that the
factor causing the anxiety at tenth grade of SMK Indomalay School Batam as below;

1. Lack of familiarity with task

2. Fear of making mistake
3. Low motivation
4. Incomprehensible input’
5. Lack of confidence
6. Low English proficiency

The most influencing factor causing of students’ speaking anxiety was lack of
familiarity with task, it shown by there were 86 % of 100% students who answered strongly
agree for each indicator, the second was fear of making mistake 84 % of 100% students who
strongly agree, the third was Low motivation 82 % of 100% students who answered strongly
agree, next was incomprehensible input 77 % of 100% students who answered strongly
agree, then lack of confidence 66 % of 100% students who answered strongly agree, the last
low English proficiency 59 % of 100% students who answered strongly agree.

By the data that collected by interview with 22 students as on above table, the
students’ strategies to overcome speaking anxiety after sorted from the highest to lowest
mean score as below:

1. Peer seeking
2. Preparation

7
Uli Modesta Siagian et al ., An Analysis of Students’ Anxiety in Speaking (03-09)

3. Relaxation
4. Positive thinking
5. Resignation

The highest strategy that the students did to overcome speaking anxiety was peer
seeking, all of the students stated that peer seeking was the best strategy to overcome
speaking anxiety in classroom. The first factor causing of speaking anxiety among the
students was peer seeking with mean score of two question of peer seeking was 100%. The
second followed by preparation strategy, prepared material before started the lesson was a
good strategy to ignore speaking anxiety, there were 98 % of 100% students who answered
yes for this items.The third was relaxation, there were 98 % of 100% students also who stated
that more relax can made the students were not anxiety to speak. Most students used
relaxation strategy to overcome their speaking anxiety.Next, positive thinking was the next
strategy to overcome speaking anxiety. There were 68 % of 100 % students who stated that
positive thinking was a strategy to overcome speaking anxiety in the classroom. The last was
resignation strategy that there were 10 students or 23 % of 100 % students who stated that
resignation was a good strategy to overcome speaking anxiety. There were 77 % students
who answered that resignation was not a strategy to overcome the students’ speaking anxiety.

DISCUSSION

The researcher concluded that there were many causes of students` anxiety to speak
English in the classroom. Students were anxiety to speak English in class were caused by:
lack of familiarity of task, fear of making mistakes, low motivation, incomprehensible
inputs, lack of confidence and then low English proficiency. It was collected from the result
of questionnaire did on 12th May 2016 between the researcher and students of tenth grade of
SMK Indomalay School Batam in Academic Year 2015/2016.
The researcher did the interview on 16th May 2016 at tenth grade of SMK
Indomalay School Batam to know the students’ strategies to overcome speaking anxiety.The
student’s strategies to overcome speaking anxiety were peer seeking, preparation, relaxation,
positive thinking and resignation. The researcher concluded the highest strategies that the
students did to overcome speaking anxiety was peer seeking, all of the students stated that
peer seeking was the best strategy to overcome speaking anxiety in classroom. There were
100% the students answered yes for this strategy.
JOURNAL ANGLO-SAXON VOL. VIII NO. 1 (2017) ISSN: 2301 5292

Based on the result of this study, dominantly students` anxiety to speak English was
caused by lack of confidence. Therefore, the researcher would like to give some suggestion
to the English teacher, especially in teaching process. The teacher is expected to pay
attention to those factors that causing students` anxiety to speak English in language
classroom. Therefore, the teacher is expected to support and encourage students to speak
English in the classroom.
From the result of this research, the researcher would like to give suggestionto the
students who are anxiety to speak English in classroom.The students are expected to
increase the students’ self-confidence to speak,the students are expected to increase the
students’ English proficiency in speaking English.
Based on the result of this research, the researcher would like to give a suggestion to
the other researcher. Others researchers are expected to use this research to add their
knowledge about anxiety to speak English. Besides, they are expected to do other research
that related to students` speaking English in language classroom.

REFERENCES

Arikunto, Suharsimi.(2010). Prosedur penelitian. Jakarta: PT. RinekaCipta.

Johnston, Joni. (2006). Controling anxiety. United Stated America: Penguin group.

Liu, Meihua. (2006). Anxiety in EFL classrooms: Causes and consequences. China: Tsinghua
University.

Riduwan, M.B.A. (2012). Statistika. Bandung: Alfabeta.

Sugiyono.(2014).Metode penelitian kuantitatif kualitatif. Indonesia: Alfabeta.