SPEAKING ANXIETY AMONG ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH YOGYAKARTA STUDENTS BATCH 2016
Abstract
This research investigates the characteristics of students who felt anxious in speaking, the factors causing their speaking anxiety, and their strategies to overcome speaking anxiety. This research adopted case study as the research design and used structured observation and standardized open-ended interview to gather the data. The researcher observed two classes focusing on listening and speaking of English Education Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta batch 2016 and six students became the participants in this research. The result showed that there were twenty characteristics of anxious students. The characteristics were trembling, avoiding eye contact, squirming, playing with hair or clothing, nervously touching object, stuttering or stammering, getting sweaty, rubbing the palms, staggering voice, reading from the script while giving presentation, speaking too fast, speaking too slow, remaining silent, using filler, heart beating quickly, getting cold, feeling nervous, having pale face, having poor stance, and getting confused. The second finding was about factor causing speaking anxiety. The factors including affective factors (introverted personality, fear of being focus of attention, fear of making mistake, doubt in speaking, having negative thought, more fluently-speaking peers, having no good friend to help), cognitive factors (memory disassociation, difficulty in learning English, inability to understand what others say, lack of practice), and linguistic factors (lack of English proficiency). The last finding was about strategy to overcome speaking anxiety. The strategies were having practice, memorizing, doing more preparation, keeping speaking English, thinking positively, bringing note, bringing something for fidgeting, using L1, avoiding eye contact, remaining silent, asking for help, and improving English proficiency. Improving English proficiency was done by improving input exposure, improving grammar knowledge, and improving pronunciation. In conclusion, there were twenty characteristics of anxious students, three major factors causing speaking anxiety, and twelve strategies to overcome speaking anxiety.