FINAL EXAMINATION

GROUP DISCUSSION TO REDUCE STUDENTS SPEAKING ANXIETY

Introduction

English is one of language in the world. It is widely used in many sides of life in this

world. It has been used in global communication. English has become one of the compulsory

subjects taught at school in Indonesia. Realizing the importance of English, the government of

Indonesia has decided that English is one of the compulsory subjects for senior high school

which have four major language skills that should be mastered by students during their period of

learning in school. Learning English as a foreign language in Indonesia is the most difficult

subject for students. Students must learn it more complex at school while they have much time to

learn the language at home. It will be more complicated for students to master the language

because they have limited time to study English. English is a has been a part of Indonesian

government. It means that English is one of important subjects that should be learned as well by

students as the one of the requirements to continue to the next level of education. Basically, the

four skills of learning English are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students are expected

to be able to master those aspects in learning English language. However, so many senior high

school students are not able to master them all especially speaking. Speaking is an activity used

to communicate with others.

Speaking is the most important activity in our daily life. According to Cameron

(2001:40), speaking can be defined as an active use of language to express meaning so that other

people can understand. Speaking occurs when a speaker uses a language actively to express and

1
deliver meaning in order to interact with the listener. It means that, speakers can use language

actively to interact with the listeners. In speaking, people will be used a particular language to

share or express the ideas, feeling, thought. Lewis and Hill (1993:54) explained that speaking a

process to cover things and pronounced by individual person. Burkart (1998:11) stated that when

speaking, the areas of knowledge which are pronunciations, grammar and vocabulary are used in

delivering the information we shared. In learning English language, speaking plays an important

role and it should be mastered by students as well. In learning English language as a foreign

language, the main purpose of speaking emphasizes on the communicative activities and the

learner are able to be fluent speaker (Flohr and Peasler, 2006, p. 2). In this case, students need to

master as well the speaking skill. Therefore, they will be considered that they have succeed to

communicate using the target language as well. However, mastering speaking skill is the most

difficult thing for students.

As we see, students nowadays are very lack in speaking even with their classmates and

teachers during the English lesson. As Young (1990:539) stated that speaking in the foreign

language situation will create anxiety. This anxiety is the factor of student’s failure in speaking.

Anxiety is known as "a state of apprehension, a vague fear" (Scovel, 1978, p. 134). Many

students feel afraid and nervous when they talk or speak or give an opinion in English when

teacher asks them questions or even students should do a presentation in front of class. They are

afraid of making mistakes and have less confidence in their speaking ability. As (Kurtus, 2001)

stated the main reason of anxiety is the students are afraid of looking foolish and stupid in front

of their friends and teachers in the class. Brick and Louie (1994) find that Asian students

typically regard correctness as highly desirable quality.

The question is that; how can we reduce student’s speaking anxiety? There are so many

2
ways to solve this problem. One off them is “Group Discussion”. According to (Slavin, 1990),

group discussion is when a group of people are together to do a work, and they are doing

interaction with the member of the group and who are psychologically sensible of one another,

who are taking apart themselves to be a group on a learning process. Group work gives

opportunity to students to speak independently without any shy, being afraid to be corrected, and

allows students to control well their communication activities. As Galton and Willianson (1992)

said that a collaborative group, all pupils in the group share the same task or assignments and

work together for joint outcome; whereas in working group, although the group members have

the same task for assignment, each pupil work for the same outcome.

There are several previous studies conducted that has similar purpose regarding

to the use of group discussion to reduce students’ speaking anxiety.

According to[ CITATION Arg14 \l 1033 ] who have conducted a research entitled “Improving

Students’ Speaking Skill Using Group Discussion (Experimental Study On the First Grade

Students Of Senior High School)”. The purpose of this article aimed to test to test the hypothesis

that group discussion can improve the students’ speaking skill of the first students of Wijaya

Kusuma Senior High School and to describe how group discussion improves students’ speaking

skill. It was classroom action research as a research method and group discussion as the research

technique. The results show that group discussion can improve students’ speaking anxiety. It can

be seen from the score result comparison between students’ pretest and posttest. The posttest

score is higher than the pretest result.

Another research who has conducted by Eka Saputri (2017) entitled “the effectiveness of

small group discussion toward speaking skill and speaking anxiety of English students at

3
Palangka Raya” measure the effect of using small group discussion on students‟ speaking skill;

(b) to measure the effect of using small group discussion on students speaking anxiety; (c) to

measure the effect of using small group discussion on students speaking skill and speaking

anxiety. The results show that there was significant effect of small group discussion toward

students‟ speaking skill; (b) there was significant effect of small group discussion toward

students‟ speaking anxiety; (c) there was no different effect between speaking skill and speaking

anxiety, the use of small group discussion was effective on students‟ speaking skill and speaking

anxiety.

Discussion

The government of Indonesia has decided that English is important and become

compulsory subject both for junior and senior high school. Both students and teachers are

required to learn and master English language as the foreign language. It becomes a serious

problem because students face many problems in learning English language, particularly English

speaking skill, which has explained before based on the personal experience from the

participants. As we see nowadays, speaking skill is really important in our life both in education

and career. Mastering English speaking is the main source that offers to get a better job,

particularly for international company based (Crystal, 1997). In this case, when people are able

to master English speaking very well, they will have lots of opportunities to work in the better

occupation than others who have low knowledge of English speaking. However, Indonesian EFL

students encounter some problems in learning English language speaking. This problem

influenced by many factors both from student itself and their environment.

The findings of the study found that mostly caused by student itself who is “shy” (low

self-confidence) to communicate using the target language. It will create “anxiety” to students

4
that will affect on students’ achievement. Low self-confidence is the major source of English

language speaking anxiety (Cheng, Horwitz and Scarlet, 1999). If students feel uncomfortable

when they are speaking, how can they produce a good communication using the target language.

For instance, student has bad grammar and she/he underestimate her/his ability. It will make

student fell shy to speak because they realized they have a very lack grammar and this problem

caused a low confidence to the student itself. To solve that problem, she used group discussion

strategy in which students are expected to be involved to speak communicatively using the target

language. Students become silly to speak up in front of the class that stare by their classmates. If

students work in group, they will feel in the same condition and more confident to speak by

using the target language. According to the study conducted by Tsui (2001, p.122) reported that

group discussion gives a big chance for students to produce some varieties of communication

and engage learning to be more meaningful

Conclusions and Suggestions

According to some theories explained above, students encounter problems in learning

English especially speaking, since English is taught as foreign language. English is one of the

most difficult subject at school, on other hand students must master English as well as the

requirement to continue their education to the next level. There are some strategies to solve

students’ speaking anxiety, one of them is group discussion. Conclusively according to the

previous studies, group discussion has positive effect to reduce students’ speaking anxiety; 1)

Students learn independently, 2) Offers students to speak communicatively using target language,

3) Give students to produce varieties of communication and engage learning to be more

meaningful, 4) A relaxed atmosphere when students make mistakes, 5) more peer-assessment.

Some suggestions to the students, particularly senior high school students who learn

5
English. Students have to learn the target language by implementing it in the daily life. It helps

student to easily recognize some expressions in the daily life communication. For instance,

students interact with their friends in their daily conversation using English. They will not be shy

or afraid if they have mistaken within the grammar, pronunciation, lack of vocabulary bank and

etc, because they are speaking to their friends. It will help to widen students’ grammar and

vocabulary by their friends’ correction. For teachers, they should have a varieties way to helps

students to solve their problems especially speaking skill. In training speaking skill, teachers

need to be more hard-working in finding out the best strategies or techniques to teaching

speaking skill. As explained previously, one of the best way is by using group discussion. Group

discussion is the effective way in promoting engage speaking activities for students. Besides,

teacher needs to encourage students so that they are not shy and afraid to speak in front of the

class. Teachers also should appreciate that each individual student have different ability that

cannot be underestimated. When students express their idea, try to appreciate them as well

because teacher’s appreciation can be students’ motivation in learning to be better.

6
References

Burnkart, G. S. (1998). Spoken Language: What It Is and How To Teach It. Retrieved from

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/speaking/goalspeak.html at 2.30 p.m. June 2nd, 2019

Brick, J. & Louie, G. (1984). Language and Culture – Vietnam: Background Notes for Teachers

in the Adult Migrant Education Program. Sydney: Adult Migrant Education Service.

Cameron, L. 2001. Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Cheng, Y., Horwitz, E.K., & Schallert, D.L. (1999). Language anxiety: Differentiating writing

and speaking components. Language Learning, 49(3), 417-446.

Crystal, D. (1997). English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Flohr, S. & Paesler, P. (2006). Teaching Listening and Speaking. GRIN verlag. Retrieved June 2,
2019, from http://www.grin.com.

Galton and, M.R & Williamson J. (1992). Group Work in the Primary classroom. London, New

York: Routledge.

Saputri.E (2017). The effectiveness of small group discussion toward speaking skill and speaking

anxiety of English students at IAIN Palangka Raya

Scovel, T. (1978). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: a review of the anxiety

research. Language Learning 28 (1), 129-142

7
Tsui, B. M. A. (2001) Classroom interaction. In R. Carter and D. Nunan (Eds.), The

Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (pp. 120-125).

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Young, D.J. (1990). An investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking.

Foreign Language Annals,23, 539-53.

Kurtus, R. (2001). Overview the Fear of speaking to Groups. Retrived June, 10th 2019 from

http://www. School-for-champions.com/speaking/fear.htm

Scovel, T. 1978. The effect of affect: A review of the anxiety literature. Language Learning, 28,

129-142

Slavin, R.E (1990), Cooperative Learning Theory, Research and Practice. Boston: Allyn and

Bacon