What Is Unseen On-Screen: A Descriptive Study on Students’ Speaking Anxiety During Online Learning

Abstract

The idea of a good speaker should endeavor fluent yet accurate speaking might arise students’ anxiety during the speaking performance, especially for EFL students. It would drive them either to prepare and perform their best or make them even worse. This state is known as Foreign Learning Speaking Anxiety (FLSA) and could hit anyone when speaking or communicating in the target language with several factors. During the existence of online learning, anxiety in speaking class might be one that is unseen on-screen. This study is aimed at describing the speaking anxiety faced by undergraduate students in speaking English during online learning and the strategies used to cope with speaking anxiety before and during the speaking performance. The participants in this study were 27 students of IKIP Budi Utomo Malang, consisting of 17 students of the Public Speaking class and 10 students of the Advanced Speaking class. To obtain the data, the questionnaire was conducted to know students’ kinds of anxiety and their strategy to deal with it before and during the speaking performance. The results showed that the students feel anxious because of four factors, namely fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and anxiety in online speaking classes. The anxiety could be seen from the unclear sentences produced, sweating, butterflies in the stomach, dry mouth, loss of words, and squeaky voice. However, students take notes, do self and peer-practice before the performance; and focus on the speaking materials and breathing management during speaking performance to release the anxiety.