Akkakoson, S. (2016).

Reflections from teachers and students on speaking anxiety in an EFL

classroom. Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 4(3), 46–70. DOI:
10.1515/jolace-2016-0025

This study analyzed the reflections from teachers and students on speaking anxiety in an
EFL classroom. It was written by Songyut Akkakoson and funded by King Mongkut’s
University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) under contract no. KMUTNB-GEN-57-
34. Qualitative as the methodology and to gather the data the researcher involved first, interview
the teachers and students interview about the speaking anxiety classroom. From the first
interview, the teachers expressed that anxiety is necessary for speaking skills. However, in an
English as a foreign language (EFL) learning environment, affective learner variables, especially
personality factors play an important role in students' language learning process either negatively
or positively (ÖztÜrk & GÜrbÜz, 2013). As one of instructor said that “the problem is that their
nerves make them unable to produce the language.” And also anxiety determines their grade in
speaking ability. They also have a hard time speaking in class and there are three factors to
consider that 1) lack of self-confidence, 2) having a poor background of English, and 3)having
neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivation to use the language. As we discussed these are related to
anxiety. As Mayer (2003) points out that 'When students are motivated to learn, they try harder
to understand the material and thereby learn more deeply, resulting in better ability to transfer
what they have learned to new situations' (p.459), letting students have the motivation of
speaking is, therefore, very important to teaching English.

After interviewing the students about 1) how they cope with their anxiety when speaking
in class, they said that they would apply strategies such as social strategies (the most frequent
strategies) that they practice speaking with peers, foreigners, or by themselves. The second was
affective strategies such as reduce anxiety and increase confidence. Meta-cognitive strategies
relate to evaluating their learning. The compensatory strategies related to how they overcome
their knowledge gaps to continue the communication they would taking an extra course. The last
was related to their sense the cognitive and memory-related strategies, they would revising the
lessons and remembering and recalling the vocabulary. The second question 2) what is the best
way to improve English speaking skills? And the major answer was increasing a repertoire of
vocabulary would help them to improve their oral English.

This article was good because the researchers involve previous researchers related to the
research topic. Zhiping and Paramasivam's (2013) students reported two types of strategies for
coping with anxiety, namely compensatory strategies (eg keeping silent, avoiding eye contact,
expressive reactions) and social strategies (eg being with friends). The researchers also gave
how to identify anxiety, first and foremost. This is a bit of good advice for teachers to overcome
the students’ anxiety in speaking class.