Vol. 4 Issue 28 – Research Paper: ‘How to Cope With Speaking Anxiety in EFL Classrooms’ by Ali KARAKAŞ

This paper has been submitted for publication by Ali KARAKAŞ.

“I like English, but don’t take part in speaking, because I’m so bad at speaking, and my friends will laugh at me.” (an unidentified student quoted in Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2009, p. 41)

Introduction

Many English language teachers are familiar with the above statement voiced by a majority of their students in speaking classes. This is, as well, a common complaint levelled by EFL teachers about their silent students. This is because teaching spoken language is deemed as a rather demanding task for teachers to achieve as compared to the other aspects of language teaching (Brown & Yule, 1999) and for learners, speaking is a highly anxiety-provoking situation (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986). The above comment from a student essentially points to the psychological construct termed as “anxiety”, which has been in the limelight of language research since 1980s (e.g. Horwitz et. al., 1986; Young, 1991) and has been found to excessively influence students’ oral skill (Fang-peng & Dong, 2010). Despite its significant impact on language learning, EFL teachers have failed to identify students suffering from anxiety in speaking classes, even worse, instead of taking steps, teachers misconceived their students’ anxiety as low ability, reluctance to engage in speaking activities or low motivation (Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2009) and have rarely taken measures to handle this serious issue (Riasiti, 2011). It is for these reasons that this paper aims to shed light on the sources of speaking anxiety by providing suggestions to diminish its adverse effects on learners’ performance in speaking classes.

Definitions of key terms

Language anxiety can be described as “the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second language texts, including speaking, listening, and learning” (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994, as quoted in Subaşı, 2010; p.30). Various types of anxiety have been categorized by researchers. For instance, Dörnyei (2005) classifies anxiety in two categories: (a) facilitating and debilitating and (b) trait and state anxiety. Facilitating anxiety is considered to be helpful for students to some extent, whereas debilitating anxiety to be harmful and to impede performance and achievement. State anxiety is experienced in certain situations, hence situational, while trait anxiety is understood as an inherent characteristic of the individual. “Speaking-in-class anxiety” is acknowledged to be situational occurring only on certain occasions in which speaking is concerned (Mak, 2011; p. 204). State anxiety is considered, by many researchers, to be more detrimental to learners than situational anxiety.

Sources of Speaking Anxiety

Research has discovered numerous sources associated with speaking anxiety. The common sources can be enumerated as fear of making mistake, tests and assessments, social comparison, competition (Dörnyei, 2001), negative evaluation and perceived low ability (Subaşı, 2010), additionally, negative judgements towards English classroom and insufficient wait-time (Mak, 2011). Students with debilitating speaking anxiety tend to display avoidance of involvement in tasks by remaining silent, sitting in the back row, avoiding eye contact with the teacher, to name a few. The aforementioned sources and avoidance strategies should be well read by teachers. If required, they should take up a doctor-like role and diagnose where the problem lies and accordingly apply interventions to dispose of the displeasing effects of anxiety. To help teachers practically actualize this, in what follows, a number of suggestions are offered in the light of previous research and experience.

How to reduce speaking anxiety

The primary role in reducing speaking anxiety belongs to the teachers who organize, conduct the tasks and evaluate students’ performance. Yet, their manners have also been reported to be the main cause of oral anxiety along with those of their peers (Hilleson, 1996; Riasiti, 2011; Subaşı, 2010). Therefore, the first step to reduce speaking anxiety is to raise teachers’ awareness about their harmful manners towards learners. These might include ways of error correction, comparing students to each other, forcing students to talk, humiliating students. Solutions to this might be the implementation of techniques from humanistic approaches such as Silent Way, Total Physical Response, Suggestopedia and Community Language Teaching (see Richards & Rogers, 2001). These approaches entail teachers to establish good rapport with students, accept them as individuals, tolerate their mistakes, and create a supportive and relaxed classroom environment. These measures could specifically minimise fear of committing mistakes, negative evaluation by teachers and peers, social comparison and competition, which can result in high student participation in speaking activities.
The conduct and selection of activities are also of great importance in decreasing the level of anxiety, as some activities tend to cause tension and distress on students (Abdullah & AbdulRahman, 2010). The activities should be centred on students’ interests and be appropriate for their proficiency levels. Given that each student has individual differences, provision of various activities is recommended to encourage each student to raise their voice. Activities conducted in cooperation with peers may lessen tension and increase attendance to tasks because collaborating rather than competing with others makes anxious students feel less threatened (Nakahashi, 2007).

A few activities to anxiety-reduction are presented in the following lines. First one is based on role plays. In such tasks, students generally take on a new persona with pseudo names. This enables them to protect their self-image by disguising their true self with a new identity and this can, somehow, mitigate their fear of negative evaluation and assessment, and perception of low ability. This can also be backed wearing a mask disguising students’ faces. Furthermore, group discussions might create more space for anxious learners to participate, since there is no right or wrong in what is said. Games such as picture describing and guess who is, based on group and pair work can be incorporated into speaking activities, for such learning is by definition less face-threatening. However, only classroom-based measures of teachers are inadequate to create an “anxiety-free zone” for learners (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 92).

The preliminary task is to identify students experiencing debilitating anxiety and help them develop coping strategies. Teachers should give special care to such students by attending to their needs and concerns even outside the classroom by taking individual-specific measures. One way of doing this is to make encouraging remarks on students’ attempts, praise their efforts, provide feedback written or oral, and have a private talk with them outside the class (Kitano, 2001 cited in Subaşı, 2010). Complementary to the prior measures, Tsiplakides & Keramida (2009) suggest similar countermeasures as implicit correction of errors, inclusion of humour, addressing students with first names, non-verbal praise such as patting on shoulders or giving a warm smile and sufficient wait time for answers. Such small steps might operate as icebreakers in the fight against speaking anxiety.

Keeping in mind that each learning situation is unique and problems faced might differ from one situation to another, the recommendations offered above could not work each time to the same extent for each case; consequently, teachers should constantly be in the probe of answers to situation- and individual-specific needs. To manage this, parents should also be consulted to learn more about the causes of anxiety in students. Particularly, in cases where personal problems and previous experiences are involved, it is more unlikely for teachers to find ways of tackling this matter. Such serious cases could necessitate professional and medical assistance from specialists such as counsellors or psychologists, if it is noticed that learner’s situational anxiety turns into trait anxiety.

Conclusion

Though teaching spoken language to learners has been of utmost necessity as it has never been so far, teachers have met various obstacles, as already noted, in their attempts to get students to talk in language classes. The main obstacle has been cited as ‘speaking anxiety’, potentially the trigger of other factors such as lack of motivation, unwillingness, low self-perception and low self-esteem. Research has dealt with the issue by identifying sources and harms, developing instruments to measure anxiety level but solutions to anxiety-reduction have so far remained unsatisfactory.

To contribute to the solution of the problem, a variety of suggestions drawn from previous studies and researcher’s own experiences were introduced in the preceding section. As emphasized previously, as practitioners, teachers should bear much of responsibility by critically evaluating their own manners, identifying needy students, applying suitable treatments, if necessary, consulting the help of students’ parents. The issue in hand still requires further research, especially, longitudinal, more practically oriented and applicable in the case of confronting anxiety-related barriers while teaching spoken language. As a final remark and summary, the suggestions for the removal of “anxiety-provoking elements” from speaking classes are to be reiterated in Dörnyei’s (2001) own words for teachers to

[a]void social comparison,
[p]romote cooperation instead of competition,
[he]lp learners to accept the fact that they will make mistakes as part of the learning process,
[m]ake tests and assessment completely ‘transparent’ and involve students in the negotiation of the final mark (p. 94).

It would be too assertive to claim that the feeling of anxiety via aforementioned steps can be entirely eradicated, since it is intrinsically existent in the learner’s life. However, being aware of the sources and accordingly taking steps, and developing coping strategies are noteworthy for both teachers and learners, at least, to curtail the ruinous impacts of anxiety on speaking classes as much as possible.

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