Abstract
This study aims at investigating EFL the fourth-year students’ level of speaking anxiety. Also, the study investigates the main three factors (communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation and low self-confidence) that contribute to increasing speaking anxiety among EFL learners. The Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (FLSAS) has been adapted to collect quantitative data and specifically measure speaking anxiety. The sample of this study was 300 fourth-year English department students at three universities in Libya. The findings of this study revealed that students experienced a moderate to high level of EFL speaking anxiety. Additionally, the findings of the study revealed that the low self-confidence factor received the highest average followed by fear of negative evaluation, and communication apprehension factors.
Highlights
Anxious English language students might not be able to successfully pass oral tasks due to their anxiety impeding their ability to fare well (Yan & Horwitz, 2008)
Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (FLSAS) is an 18-item questionnaire adopted from Ozturk and Gurbuz (2014) who designed their questionnaire by selecting 18 items from the 33 items of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al, 1986
The percentage of the students who experience a high level of speaking anxiety is considered relatively high with the percentage of 36.33 %, whereas, only 15.67% of them scored less than 54, which indicates a low level of speaking anxiety
Summary
Anxious English language students might not be able to successfully pass oral tasks due to their anxiety impeding their ability to fare well (Yan & Horwitz, 2008). Relaxed students would perform better because they do not experience the language anxiety impedance (Woodrow, 2006). Speaking is the most challenging skill of language learning, and it is one of the most negatively influential affective variables (Marzec-Stawiarska, 2015). It plays an important role in language learning and contributes in reducing learners’ oral engagement and performance (Byrne, Flood, & Shanahan, 2012)
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