1
AN ANALYSIS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS’ ANXIETY IN SPEAKING CLASS
(
A Study at the Second Semester Students of English Department STKIP PGRI SUMBAR Academic Year 2014/2015)
Oleh:
SUPARMI*)
**)Hevriani Sevrika dan **)M. Khairi Ikhsan Staf Pengajar Program Studi Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui tipe kecemasan apa yang dialami oleh mahasiswa dalam kelas keterampilan berbicara dan untuk mengetahui faktor kecemasan yang paling dominan dalam kelas keterampilan berbicara. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif yang bermaksud untuk menganalisa tentang kecemasan mahasiswa dalam kelas keterampilan berbicara.
Penelitian ini ditujukan kepada mahasiswa jurusan pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI SUMBAR, dimana populasinya adalah mahasiswa semester kedua. Jumlah responden dalam penelitian ini adalah 63 mahasiswa. Yang menjadi responden adalah mahasiswa yang mengambil mata kuliah speaking II di sesi A dan sesi D.
Dalam mengumpulkan data, peneliti menggunakan angket, interview dan observasi. Yang pertama peneliti membagikan angket kepada responden. Angket ini berjumlah 33 butir pernyataan berdasarkan indikator tentang kecemasan mahasiswa dalam kelas keterampilan berbicara.
Berdasarkan data yang didapatkan selama penelitian, Penulis dapat menyimpulkan bahwa yang merupakan tipe kecemasan yang dominan adalah State Anxiety yang memiliki persentase lebih tinggi dari tipe yang lain, yaitu 67%. Kemudian faktor yang dominan yang mempengaruhi kemasan berbicara mahasiswa adalah lack of preparation, mereka cemas karena kurangnya persiapan sehingga tidak tahu apa yang harus disampaikan, berdasarkan hasil interview. Dan yang terakhir adalah peneliti menggunakan observasi untuk menguatkan data dari angket dan interview.
Key words: Speaking, Anxiety, Types of Anxiety, Factors of Anxiety
*) Peneliti
**) Pembimbing
2 INTRODUCTION
Speaking is the process of transferring information from the speakers into another people. The purpose of speaking is to inform, persuade, entertain the listener, etc. In speaking the students will express their opinion through oral communication, they will talk, give opinion, give suggestion, and also they will describe something to someone or to the listener. Students who have good in speaking they will have high self-confidence in speaking.
However, the students want to able to speak well but they afraid that their friends will laugh at them when they speak English. They do not have self- confidence to speak English, and also they feel inferior that the other students have more good ability in speaking.
Because of that, when they speak English they will get nervous, anxious, and also they will confuse how to speak well. If the students get nervous during speaking the students will forget the topic that will be talked, the students will not have concentration to speak. Each students have different factor that make their anxiety when they speak English.
Furthermore, the students have various factors that influence on their speaking anxiety like explained before, because of that the researcher interest in analyzing the college students’ speaking anxiety, study at second semester of English Department STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in Academic Year 2014-2015.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Speaking
Speaking is oral communication that is needed by human being to fulfill their needs in transferring new information. Through speaking, the
people can express their intention to others. It is also useful as a tool of communication in understanding foreign language and it becomes the most crucial skill to carry out a conversation of a language.
According to Harmer (2001:129), speaking is the ability to speak fluently presupposes not only knowledge of language features, but also the ability to process information and language on the spot. It means that the speakers not only think about the grammar or knowledge what the speakers know, but also ability to deliver information clearly to someone.
Also speaker should consider about the language used, the speaker speaks based on the contexts or place where the speaker speaks and with whom the speaker speak.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or uneasy about something with an uncertain outcome. Most speakers who have experienced speech anxiety know the importance of being calm and confident when speaking. According to Scovel in Brown (2000: 151), anxiety is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension or worry. It means that anxiety is a feeling that felt by the someone who will speak in front of the class. First, If the students will speak in front of the class, they will feel uneasiness, sometimes its caused they rare speak English, they will feel anxious about many thing. Second, the students will be frustation when they will speak. Frustration is an emotion that occurs in situations where a person is blocked from reaching a desired outcome.
Third, the students who will give speak in front of the class they will feel self-doubt.
Self-doubt is a feeling of lack of
3 confidence in one’s own ability. Last is apprehension or worry. The students who will speak in front of the class they will feel apprehension or worry.
Apprehension is a fear that something unpleasant is going to happen, they fear if they will make something wrong during the speak.
Furthermore, Koba (2000) defines that anxiety is a state of uneasiness and apprehension or fear caused by the anticipation of something threatening. It means that someone who gets anxiety they can feel scary, fear, nervous, and worry. That is one of anxiety because to make students will not to speak in front of the class. They can be nervous when the students stand up in front of the class. If the students have high feel anxiety, the students will have some problems to speak in front of the class. Because anxiety can make the bad effects to the students performance in speaking.
Types of Anxiety
Anxiety is a negative feeling that comes from the within individual, from the environment, and also from the situation. According to Amato and Patricia (2003), there are two types of anxiety such as trait anxiety and state anxiety. The first is trait anxiety, a predisposition toward feeling anxious. It means that trait anxiety is negative emotions that can give negative effects because its leaning to anxious toward something, especially in public speaking when the speakers will stand up in front of the class. The second is state anxiety that anxiety produced in reaction to a specific situation. It means that state anxiety is negative feeling that happens in certain situation.
On the other hand, Mesri (2012:148) classification of anxiety into
three types; Trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation specific anxiety. First is trait anxiety, is a more permanent disposition to be anxious. In other words, trait anxiety is the permanent feeling of anxiety that come from the personality.
Second is state anxiety, an apprehension experienced at a particular moment in time as a response to a definite situation.
In other words, State anxiety is refers to someone’s nervous is influenced by his or her own experienced for certain situation.
Third is situation specific anxiety is related to apprehension unique to specific situation and events. On the other words situation specific anxiety it can be defined that negative feeling that happens depend on the situation and in certain case.
Situation specific anxiety is similar with stage fright with regard to speaking, is a temporary, short-term form of anxiety triggered by certain situations and experiences.
Factors of Anxiety
The influence of anxiety is can make the students fear to speak English with their friends, lecturer and with the other people. There are some factors that can influence in speaking anxiety.
According to Worde (2003) there are five factors contributing students’ anxiety in their speaking class. The first is non- comprehension. Non-comprehension is the incapability to follow what is being said in the classroom. The second is speaking activity. It means the activities in class make students feeling overwhelmed and nervous when speaking, because of limited vocabulary or limited grammatical knowledge. The third factor is pedagogical and instructional practices, in this factor the lecturer become the main reason for students, as they felt uncomfortable. For
4 instance, when lecturer was calling on students one after another in seating order, it made the students very anxious.
The fourth is error correction; it means that students became annoyed when the teacher corrected the error before students had time to accomplished formulate a response. Indeed, it made the students lose their focus. The last is native speakers. Students seemed had a negative perception of being distinguished to the native speakers. As students believe that, the lecturer taught overdue to native speaker in some way.
Furthermore, Liu (2007) there were nine factors affecting students’
anxiety; they were lack of vocabulary, low English proficiency, lack of preparation, lack of practice, fear of making mistakes and being laughed at, fear of losing face, fear of being focus of attention, fear of unable to follow and understand others, and the last inability to express ideas.
RESEARCH METHOD
The method this research was descriptive qualitative, which emphasizes on describing the college students’
anxiety in speaking class. Gay and Airasian (2000:11) state that descriptive research is research that reports phenomena as it appears in the process of the research and collects the data in order to answer the research questions. A qualitative research is describing, recording, analyzing and interpreting condition exist (Judith, Preissle in Lestari, 2010:22). The researcher tries to investigate, to get the data and describe the college students speaking anxiety at the second semester of English Department of STKIP PGRI SUMBAR academic year 2014/2015.
Respondents
Gay and Airasian (2000:281) state that the selected respondent of a research must be able to provide the desire information sought as well as willing to provide it to the researcher. In this research, the researcher had chosen STKIP PGRI West Sumatra as the place to conduct the research. The researcher had chosen the second semester students of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2014/2015.
Instrumentation 1. Questionnaire
The first instrument that used by the researcher was questionnaire. Gay and Airisian (2000:212) state that questionnaire is a checklist or series of questions drawn up in writing about anything related to the research. In this research, researcher would ask the respondents to select from a list of statement. In this case, the statements propose to the students related to their speaking anxiety. The researcher used the questions based on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety scale (Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M.B., & Cope, J). The researchers translate the questionnaire from English into Indonesia to avoid misunderstanding of statements by the respondent.
2. Interview
After doing the first instrument, the researcher used the second instrument that was interview. According to Creswell (2012:217), a qualitative interview occurs when researchers ask one or more participants general, open-ended questions and record their answer. In this case, the researcher had given interview to the second semester students of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera academic year 2014/205. The interview is about
5
% 100 N x P F speaking anxiety. The questions of the
interview were related to the factors of anxiety in speaking.
3. Observation
The third instrument that would be used by the researcher was observation. According to Cresswell (2012:213), observation is the process of gathering open-ended, firsthand by observing people and places at a research site. In doing observation, researcher made field notes during speaking class activities.
Technique of Data Collection
In collecting the data for this research, the researcher used all of the instruments that were explained before.
There were questionnaire, interview and observation. First, researcher distributed the questionnaire sheets to the students to got the data. After students complete the questionnaires, the researcher collected it again and from the data the researcher analyzes the college students’ anxiety in speaking class.
Second, the researcher conducted the interview after the researcher found the students who had filled the questionnaire. The researcher conducted the interview based on plan-unstructured interview where the students felt free to answer all the questions from the researcher. The researcher comes to the students to interview them. Then, the researcher had given some questions to the students about speaking anxiety. This interview conducted by second semester students of English Department STKIP PGRI West Sumatera academic year 2014/2015.
Third, the researcher used observation. In this case the researcher collected the data by these following steps. First, the researcher prepared table
of field note. Second, the researcher came into the classroom to observe the college students’ anxiety in speaking class. Third, the researcher wrote what are the causes of college students’
anxiety in speaking class. It was done to make sure the researcher got all of information related to college students’
anxiety in speaking class.
Technique of Data Analysis
In analyzing data, the researcher analyzed the data gathered from questionnaire, interview and observation.
After the researcher distributed the questionnaire, the researcher would interview the students, then, the researcher would observe the students.
After that, the researcher analyzed the data. According to Gay and Airisian (2000: 241-249), there are four steps for analyzing qualitative data, reading/memoing, description, classifying, and interpreting and the researcher analyzed the result of questionnaire used percentage formula was proposed by Arikunto (2006:235):
Note:
P : Percentage of the students score F : Frequency of students score N : The number of students
6 DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDING
Data : Graph of the Result of Questionnaire about Types Anxiety
From the percentage of type anxiety above, the researcher found that state anxiety in the first position, it means the students felt anxiety because of danger situation, and also because of the other people, like the lecturer asked them to speak without preparation, it was made the students panic and did not know what would they talked. Then, the students do not understand about what lecturer said in English. Meanwhile, state anxiety is the dominant types that encountered by the students in speaking class because the total percentage was 67%.
Then, the factors influence in students speaking anxiety were the students lack of preparation, they never practice to pronounce the words in English, and also they never practice to speak English, so if the lecturer asked them to speak, they would panic and getting the nervous, it was make the anxious in speaking class. It support by the result of researcher observation that the students felt anxious when they had not preparation before. For example, the lecturer asked he/she to spoke suddenly they would be confused, but if the
lecturer gave them times to prepare they more comfortable to perform in speaking class.
Interpretation
From the data analysis and findings above, the researcher can make the interpretation that describe the second semester students English department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2014/2015 generally realize state anxiety in speaking class. It happens because the percentage of state anxiety is higher than other type that is 67%. It means that the second semester students in English department of STKIP PGRI West Sumatera in academic year 2014/2015 get state anxiety in speaking class.
Moreover, the factors that influence on the students’ anxiety in speaking are they are lack of preparation, because the students still nervous when the lecturer asks them to speak. Based on the statement above the researcher has interpretation that the students get anxiety when the lecturer asks them suddenly to speak. The students feel nervous or anxious because they do not have good preparation to come in the speaking class.
From the statement above, the researcher concluded that the students felt anxiety because of the danger situation, like when the lecturer ask them suddenly to speak, they are nervous because they have not good preparation before they come into the class. The students are not ready to come into the class. In speaking class the students should talk actively, thus they have to ready to speak in front of the class whenever when the lecturer asks.
However, the problem that why the students get nervous in speaking class
0 20 40 60 80
Types of Anxiety
Types of Anxiety
7 because they are not ready to come in speaking class, they have lack of vocabulary, lack of reparation, etc.
CONCLUSSIONS
Based on the research finding, the researcher concluded all of the instrumentation that used during the research and the researcher found that the students encountered state anxiety, it means that students felt anxiety because of the danger situation, like when the lecturer asked them suddenly to speak, they are nervous because they have not good preparation before they come into the class. The students are not ready to come into the class.
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