Abstract
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.
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