English Speaking Anxiety: A Study of Undergraduates at Lasbela University, Baluchistan

2020

Although, English language has spread across Sindh to a great extent over the years due to plethora of reasons which mainly include the status of English as the official language of the province of Sindh; secondly it is a medium of instruction at all levels in the educational institutions and universities in Sindh. Due to the hegemony of English, the trend of imparting education from primary to post doctoral studies has deepened its roots in Sindh like that of entire Pakistan. Yet the speaking anxiety of undergraduate students studying in various departments at this university remains intact rather than diminishing. English speaking and learning anxiety as an unambiguous feature of the language acquisition have employed an immense area of research since last couple of decades. This study is aimed at exploring the height, level and degree of anxiety in speaking & learning English amongst the undergraduates of various departments of the University of Sindh. This research has been carried out with the help of a quantitative research design after bringing a survey methodology in use so as to collect data. The sample of the research consisted of 200 participants belonging to different departments of the University of Sindh, Jamshoro. The students for the purpose were chosen indiscriminately. English as foreign verbal communication lecture hall nervousness scale urbanized by Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) has been utilized en route for gathering information for this research. Results and findings of the research have underlined more than a few implications in this regard. Moreover the remedy for removing the students' anxiety has also been insinuated and suggested.

International Journal of English Linguistics, 2017

English language enjoys its glory as an official language of Pakistan and it is used widely as a medium of instructions across educational institutes. Since anxiety retards the learning process, therefore it has been widely researched in the world and seems under researched in Pakistani context. Thus, the prime aim of this research is to explore the factors that cause English language speaking anxiety among Postgraduate Students of University of Balochistan (UoB), Pakistan. This study also aimed at determining the statistical significant difference if any across gender. The quantitative research design was employed in which a questionnaire comprising of eighteen items was adapted from the study by Horwitz et al. (1986). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in the SPSS (version, 21). The findings revealed that UOB students were experiencing anxiety due to myriad factors in EFL classroom. The findings of the t-test revealed no statistical significant difference a...

2019

Although, English language has spread across Sindh to a great extent over the years due to plethora of reasons which mainly include the status of English as the official language of the province of Sindh; secondly it is a medium of instruction at all levels in the educational institutions and universities in Sindh. Due to the hegemony of English, the trend of imparting education from primary to post doctoral studies has deepened its roots in Sindh like that of entire Pakistan. Yet the speaking anxiety of undergraduate students studying in various departments at this university remains intact rather than diminishing. English speaking and learning anxiety as an unambiguous feature of the language acquisition have employed an immense area of research since last couple of decades. This study is aimed at exploring the height, level and degree of anxiety in speaking & learning English amongst the undergraduates of various departments of the University of Sindh. This research has been carr...

The primal objective of this research was to study the level of speaking-anxiety among the students of different ages. Gloss phobia or speech anxiety is the fear of public speaking. Some people have this specific phobia, while others have social anxiety disorder which impede the foreign language or second language learning process. Those ESL learners who experience the communicative anxiety, fail to speak effectively. Communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation and general feeling of anxiety would be discussed in this research paper. The tool used for this study was adapted from Horwitz's (1983) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). The result showed that the participants experienced a high level of communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation. The authors have also given some fruitful suggestions in order to lower the level of anxiety among students.

English language enjoys its glory as an official language of Pakistan and it is used widely as a medium of instructions across educational institutes. Since anxiety retards the learning process, therefore it has been widely researched in the world and seems under researched in Pakistani context. Thus, the prime aim of this research is to explore the factors that cause English language speaking anxiety among Postgraduate Students of University of Balochistan (UoB), Pakistan. This study also aimed at determining the statistical significant difference if any across gender. The quantitative research design was employed in which a questionnaire comprising of eighteen items was adapted from the study by Horwitz et al. (1986). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in the SPSS (version, 21). The findings revealed that UOB students were experiencing anxiety due to myriad factors in EFL classroom. The findings of the t-test revealed no statistical significant difference across gender. This paper has implications on both teaching and learning of English as a foreign language in Pakistani context.

International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 2020

English language speaking anxiety is a universal phenomenon. Several studies have been conducted to explore and find out the reasons behind it which unearthed many different aspects of anxiety. The purpose of this study is to find out the levels of speaking anxiety among Pakistani university students and to see if EFL speakers of Pakistan have the same factors of speaking anxiety, as pointed out in the adapted version of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). An adapted version of FLCAS was employed to find out the answers to these questions. The sample was taken from a public sector university comprising a total number of 512 students. The results show that, overall, the students have a low level of speaking anxiety and the adapted version of FLCAS does not completely serve the purpose of measuring the level of speaking anxiety in the Pakistani context. From this study it is recommended that a thorough study comprising other disciplines as well must be carried out to find out the factors causing speaking anxiety in Pakistani learners of English as second language.

Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 2021

Purpose of the study: This study aims to explore the possible causes of speaking anxiety among Pakistani university students in an engineering university in Karachi. Another aim of this study is to find out the strategies used by these students to cope with the anxiety they have while speaking English as a second or foreign language. Methodology: The research was qualitative and used an open-ended questionnaire to take the detailed responses of the participants. 80 (40 males and 40 females) participants were selected for this study using the purposive sampling technique. The researchers also translated the tool into the Urdu language to make it more intelligible for the participants. Main Findings: The causes of speaking anxiety were lack of confidence, vocabulary, fear of being ridiculed, peer pressure, facing a lot of people, rules of grammar, lack of preparation, fear of making mistakes, and negative attitude of the teacher and the coping strategies were avoiding the audience, taking help from teacher or peer, preparing well, taking deep breaths, facilitating anxiety, distracting the anxiety, self-talk/praise, restarting, physical movement, using humor and maintaining eye contact with only one person. Applications of this study: This study is useful for the teachers teaching courses related to speaking English as a second or foreign language. This study will help the teachers in tracing the explored elements of anxiety in a class in general and in a student in particular. They will try to mold their pedagogy to make the learning process more enjoyable and less anxious. Novelty/Originality of this study: The current study explores the elements of speaking anxiety in the Pakistani context. Earlier studies have implemented pre-invented tools rather than unearthing the anxiety-provoking elements. Hence, this study can be considered as an ice breaker when it comes to exploring the elements of speaking anxiety in the Pakistani context.

2021

This research explains students’ anxiety in speaking English at the Fourth semester of English Education Study Program at Muhammadiyah University of Palu. This is qualitative research. In collecting data, the researcher used interviews. The researcher used three major phases of the data analysis, they were: data reduction, data display, and data verification. From the data analysis, the researcher came across some conclusions: first, researcher found that the factors of students' anxiety in speaking English are: come from the teacher (threatening acts, incomprehensible input, and pressure). Second, it comes from the students (lack of knowledge, fear of negative evaluation, low self-esteem, and should speak perfect). Third, comes from the environment (from non-intensive English school and unsupportive classmates).

Language is a most important tool of communication; education is a major process of learning, all-round development of the individual and for attainment of aims of the society. So the system and process of education depends largely on the language or the medium of instruction for the learning and development of new generation. That’s why language plays a crucial role in education. The purpose of this study was first to examine the causes of students’ anxiety in EMI (English medium instruction) and second explore students’ perceptions related to difficulty in communication in English. Rathore and Pancholi (2013), elaborates that In Present students suffer from several types of anxiety such as anxiety related with exam, accomplishment of the course, enactment in the class, peer pressure, parent pressure, teacher pressure. Some level of anxiety are good as it provokes the students to do well but high level of anxiety may cause disproportion and affect students’ performance negatively. The data were collected using a questionnaire based on close ended questions of Likert scale from three departments of university of education bank road campus Lahore. Descriptive statistics method was administered through SPSS version 20 for data analysis. The results indicate that students did have confusion and other factors that are the cause of anxiety in EMI. The results also indicate that a high percentage of participants prefers mother tongue as MOI over EMI. Thus the teachers need to be aware of learner’s difficulties in the language learning environment and strive to prepare activities and materials that are interesting and thought-provoking for students for the improvement in their English language acquisition.

This study aimed to investigate foreign language anxiety at tertiary level in Pakistan. It adopted a mixed methods approach. Firstly, foreign language anxiety scale was employed as a research tool for data collection. In addition, the focus group interviews were also conducted to have in depth understanding of anxiety under investigation. Data were randomly collected from 100 participants (Male= 94; Female= 6) from different disciplines who were enrolled to learn English at Lasbela University, Baluchistan. The findings of this study indicate anxiety of participants in learning English language. Specifically, participants were reported more anxious in test anxiety which was rated high by students with total (Mean= 40.5; SD= 7.00), second, communication apprehension is rated with (Mean= 28.8; SD= 5.22) and last but not least is fear of negative evaluation with (Mean= 23.7; SD= 5.93). In focus group interviews, this study frequently recorded some factors such as poor academic background, fear of taking tests in English, fear of making mistakes and fear of evaluation from teachers which maximize the level of anxiety among the participants. This study suggests some pedagogical strategies which may be considered learning and teaching practices at university level education. Among the strategies, most frequently discussed in interviews were teachers should create rapport among students especially with those who are inactive and passive in learning classroom and they should respect students' feelings and emotions in front of other peers in class These strategies tend to help teachers to minimize anxiety level of participants in classroom. Keywords: foreign language anxiety, research on anxiety, anxiety factors and pedagogical strategies