Undergraduates’ Speaking Anxiety in English as Second Language (ESL) Classrooms

Abstract

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.

Stress and Coping Strategies in Public Speaking: Comparative Case Studies of Japanese and Malaysian Undergraduates

“…The dominant factor contributing to this issue was communication apprehension for high and moderate anxiety learners, while test anxiety was observed in low anxiety learners. Another noteworthy study on this issue can also be observed in Long, Yih, and Lin (2019) on undergraduate students from two public institutions of higher learning in Sarawak. While this study reported that the students generally experienced an average of speaking anxiety, which was a similar finding to Miskam and Saidalvi's (2019) study, one interesting observation was that female undergraduate experienced a significantly higher level of speaking anxiety compared to their male counterparts.…”

“…Stress in public speaking, specifically among undergraduate students, has been extensively explored by researchers over the years (Zulkurnain & Kaur, 2014;Evans, Clinton, Cookson, Brown & Woods, 2017;Long, Yih & Lin, 2019). This phenomenon has also been studied across different age groups, such as high school students (Katz, 2016) and working adults (Mellifont, Smith-Merry & Scanlan et al, 2016).…”

English Oral Communication Apprehension: A Quantitative Inquiry on Malaysian Administrative Staff in an Educational Institution

“…Yet, as Rafek et al (2014) highlighted, gender is an insignificant factor in CA, supported by McCroskey (1984), who explained that CA has minimal connection with gender. Based on the findings from several studies on different contexts towards gender roles in the CA (Abdullah, 2014;Kimberley et al, 2020), a common trend was found where females present a higher level of CA than males. However, most studies needed to test an extensive enough number of respondents to generalise this assumption.…”

“…Most studies reported that tertiary students experienced a moderate English CA level (Ireland, 2020;Miskam & Saidalvi, 2018). Moreover, concerning gender and CA level, most studies reported that females were more apprehensive than males (Kimberley et al, 2020;Loureiro et al, 2020). Pragash et al (2020) concluded no significant difference between gender and CA among 450 Malaysian undergraduates who responded from several public universities.…”

“…More importantly, Malaysian universities were mandated to collaborate with universities in the ASEAN region to promote an ASEAN collaborative and cooperative spirit (Wan & Sirat, 2017). Also, contrary to the investigation of language learners' CA or anxiety, numerous studies expand from SLA in the secondary (Bastida Jr. & Yapo, 2019) to the tertiary levels (Ghazali et al, 2020;Kimberley et al, 2020;Razawi et al, 2015). Hence, much literature is needed to find out the evidence of CA among professionals, i.e., the administrative staff working at tertiary institutions.…”