Tracing Back the Issue of Speaking Anxiety among EFL Learners: From Possible Causes to Practical Implications

Abstract

This paper aims to scrutinize the possible causes of speaking anxiety issue among the Indonesian EFL secondary students and the critical implications to alleviate the issue. Although several studies have discussed the causes of speaking anxiety, those studies do not emphasize the interrelationship between each cause. Hence, this paper attempts to enrich the related field by tracing back the interconnected relationship between the causes of speaking anxiety, as well as rethinking the possible solutions to cope with this issue. Through the exploration of existing empirical studies and the further discussion on Foreign Language Anxiety framework proposed by Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) as the secondary research data, this study classifies the causes of speaking anxiety into two major causes, including affectiverelated and linguistic-related causes. The promotion of cooperative learning atmosphere and the needs to rebalance the focus of achieving linguistic accuracy and providing broad speaking opportunities are the critical solutions to cope with the issue. This paper also provides suggestions to enlighten both EFL teachers and researchers in conducting classroom activities in rethinking future research agendas.

Strategies to Overcome Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety in Indonesian Efl Learning Contexts

“…Armed with this collaborative speaking learning enterprise, they have not merely transfigured into more competent speakers but also open-minded academicians highly desirous of disseminating a wide array of information to other learning counterparts. This enjoyable speaking learning characteristic is decisively corroborated by the finding of Mahmud (2018) asserting that to maximize Indonesian university EFL learners' speaking performances to the utmost potential, language teachers are highly encouraged to bring about more pleasurable speaking learning circumstances and invoke more collaborative speaking learning enterprises amplifying learners' L2 communicative together with social competencies simultaneously. Furthermore, it is also reasonable to be assumed here that the availability of enjoyable L2-speaking learning enterprises is of crucial importance in infusing a higher degree of long-lasting awareness within learners to develop their communicative proficiency into greater potential.…”

Unraveling the Veil of Speaking Anxiety: A Comprehensive Study of Indonesian EFL Learners at the Undergraduate Level

“…Students tended to have a negative view of their own speaking abilities, which caused them to fear criticism from others. These issues also contributed to their low enthusiasm for participating in class activities (Mahmud, 2018). This finding also supported item 2, the students were hesitant to talk in English because they knew that other students would correct them if they made mistakes (Antoro et al, 2015).…”

Efl Students’ Speaking Achievement And Its Relationship With Epistemic Beliefs

“…Indonesian Higher Education especially English Language Teaching (ELT) study program implements competency-based language instruction method in the teaching of speaking; however, in the daily life, most of Indonesian EFL students do not speak English, they only can practice their English in EFL classroom (Marcellino & Marcellinus, 2005). Since they lack practices, it can be presumed that the students may face several issues in the EFL classroom (Mahmud & Saputra, 2018). Therefore, in the ELT study program, speaking competence can be achieved by joining several courses that accommodate students' improvement of speaking achievement such as General English Communication, Guided Speaking, Intensive Speaking, and Public Speaking courses.…”