Category: ELTWeekly Vol. 4 Issue 28

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.