Many students exhibit fear of speaking in English in the English as Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Additionally, there are limited studies in this area of concern among the undergraduates in Sarawak. Hence, this study aimed to identify the students‟ anxiety level towards speaking English based on four components, namely communication apprehension, test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and comfort in using English in the classrooms. This study also examined whether there is any significant difference in the level of anxiety in terms of gender. A total of 592 undergraduates from two public institutions of higher learning in Sarawakwere involved in this study. A Public Speaking Class Anxiety Scale (PSCAS) by Yaikhong and Usaha (2012) was adopted in this study to measure anxiety in the ESL speaking classes. The results gathered through the questionnaires were analysed using SPSS package to determine the students‟ speaking anxiety levels and the significant difference in the level of anxiety in speaking English in terms of gender. The findings revealed that undergraduates experienced an average level of speaking anxiety. T-test analysis of the findings in the study also portrayed that generally the female undergraduates experienced higher speaking anxiety as compared to the male undergraduates in all the four factors of ESL speaking anxiety. Among the four factors of speaking anxiety, only the factor of 'comfort in using English' in the classrooms showed a statistically significant difference between male and female undergraduates. Findings of this study would be significant as knowing the level of anxiety among the undergraduates in ESL classrooms will provide the basis for educators to plan better strategies or techniques to help students in overcoming their English speaking anxiety and to improve their oral English proficiency. It will also help students to be aware of their own speaking anxiety level so that they can seek for measures to overcome their speaking anxiety.
Although explicit teaching of vocabulary is often practised in language classrooms, it has been proven to be rather ineffective since words are not taught in context. This leads to the increasing use of incidental vocabulary learning approach, which emphasises on repeated readings as a source for vocabulary learning. By adopting this approach, this study aims to investigate students’ ability in learning vocabulary incidentally via verbal dramatisation of written texts. In this case, readers’ theatre (RT) is used as a way to allow learners to engage in active reading so as to promote vocabulary learning. A total of 160 diploma students participated in this case study and they were divided equally into two groups, namely classroom reading (CR) and reader’s theatre (RT) groups. A proficiency test was first conducted to determine their vocabulary levels. Based on the test results, a story was selected as the reading material for the two groups. The CR group read the story through a normal reading lesson in class while the RT group was required to verbally dramatize the text through readers’ theatre activity. Then, a post-test based on vocabulary levels was carried out and the results were compared. The findings revealed that incidental learning was more apparent in the RT group and their ability to learn words from the higher levels was noticeable through higher accuracy scores. Although not conclusive, this study has demonstrated the potential of using readers’ theatre as a form of incidental vocabulary learning activity in ESL settings.
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