Investigating Factors of Anxiety Faced by Student in Speaking English: A Case Study in

Junior High School

Anzhari Hanandio Haidar1, Alan Jaelani2, Eska P. Prasetya3

Universitas Ibn Khaldun

anzharihanandio@gmail.com

ABSTRAK

Kecemasan adalah perasaan frustrasi, terancam, ketakutan, ketegangan, dan kekhawatiran yang dialami sebagian
besar siswa saat melakukan bahasa Inggris lisan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menyelidiki faktor-faktor yang
menyebabkan kecemasan siswa dalam berbicara bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini bersifat deskriptif kualitatif yang
melibatkan 10 siswa berkemampuan berbicara rendah sebagai partisipan. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui
kuesioner dan wawancara. Penelitian ini menemukan bahwa kurangnya kosa kata merupakan faktor kecemasan
yang paling dominan dihadapi siswa (52,6%). Faktor lainnya adalah kurangnya kosa kata (47,50%), kurangnya
latihan (45,0%), kurangnya persiapan (47,0%), takut membuat kesalahan (47,0%), ketidakmampuan untuk
mengungkapkan ide (45,0%), kemampuan bahasa Inggris yang rendah (46,0%) dan takut menjadi perhatian
(46,0%). Temuan menunjukkan bahwa faktor kecemasan harus dipertimbangkan oleh guru dalam membantu
siswa mengatasi masalah terutama kurangnya kosa kata siswa sebagai faktor dominan.

Kata kunci: kecemasan, berbicara bahasa Inggris, kecakapan bahasa Inggris.

ABSTRACT

Anxiety is a feeling of frustration, being threatened, apprehension, tension, and worry that most student
experience when performing spoken English. This research aims to investigate the factors that lead to students
anxiety in speaking English. This study is descriptive qualitative which involved 10-low-speaking-proficiency
students’ as participants. The data were gathered through questionnaire and interview. This study finds that
lack of vocabulary is the most dominant factors of anxety faced by the students (52.6%). The other factors are
lack of vocabulary (47.50 %), lack of practice (45.0 %), lack of preparation (47.0 %), fear of making mistakes
(47.0 %), inability to express ideas (45.0 %), low English proficiency (46.0%) and fear of being attention (46.0
%). The findings suggest that the factors of anxiety should be considered by the teacher in helping students cope
with the problems especially for student’s lack of vocabulary as the dominant factors.

Keyword: anxiety, speaking English, English proficiency.

INTRODUCTION language to express meanings in order that people

In this globalization era, English has the most
important role for communication and as a bridge
to connect people around the world. English is also
the second language of many countries where the
primary language is not English, such as Malaysia,
Singapore, and others. However, in Indonesia,
English is taught as a foreign language. It has been
introduced in Kindergarten, Elementary, Primary
school, and University.
In learning English, there are four skills:
speaking, writing, reading and listening, that
students have to master in order to be competence
in the language. Unfortunately, they do not
perfectly master them especially speaking skill.
Meanwhile, speaking is the most important because
from speaking, people can express their ideas,
thoughts, feelings, and opinions to others. Cameron
(2011) assumes that speaking is the active use of
may understand what they talk about.
In addition, most English language
teachers excessively portion the skills of speaking,
while students' speaking skills seem to be ignored.
The learning appraisal system also tends to be done
only on the cognitive aspect, not on the affective
and- psychomotor aspects. As a result, interest and
learning activities of students in these subjects are
generally low, which in the end student’s
achievement in this lesson is low.
Generally, the students want to speak English
appropriately, but they still find some problems in
speaking because to speak in English is not easy for
them. Brown (2007) assumes that speaking is more
difficult to be acquired than the three others.
Therefore, they find out difficulties in learning
speaking class. One of the difficulties is due to
anxiety. Anxiety problem seems affecting them in
learning speaking skill. Woodrow (2006) assumes
anxiety is a problem in language learning and has
contributing effects toward speaking English.
Meanwhile, Na (2007) supports that language
anxiety is an affective hindrance on second or
foreign language acquisition.
LejlaHadziosmanovic (2012) gives the
examples of the anxiety in speaking skill such as
feeling nervous, worried, and fear when doing
presentation or talking in front of the class. They
show some of the symptoms of anxiety when they
practice English speaking in the classroom, such as
sweating, blushing, heart beating faster, dizzying
and even moving a lot during the presentation.
Those occur because they think their language
problems such as their grammar, vocabulary, and
pronunciation. In addition, they are worried of
making mistakes, fear of being commented and
laughed by their teacher and friends, because they
think that English is difficult subject. Therefore,
they cannot perform maximally and finally, they
get poor achievement in learning English speaking
skill.
METHOD
This research is classified as case study using
descriptive qualitative method. Case study is
basically an intensive study of an individual or
group that is seen having a particular case. A case
study is a single instance of some bound system,
which can range from one individual to a class, a
school, or an entire community. The data gathered
can include interview data, narrative accounts,
classroom observations, verbal reports, and written
documents.
Bodgan and Taylor in Setiyadi (2006: 219) explain
that qualitative research which produces descriptive
data in written or spoken words from the people
and their behaviour which can be observe. The
researcher used descriptive design in this research
because this research is focus on a certain case
study in the school environment. In this case the
case study was the activities of teaching and
learning English. Therefore, the appropriate design
can be use in conducting this research was
descriptive research. The design consisted two
stages. The first were giving the questionnaire for
low students. The secondstage was doing the
interview with the low students. This interview
happened after the researcher did the questionnaire.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The questions asked on the closed ended
questionnaire were designed to answer all of the
problems statements in this research. The following
are the findings revealed from close ended
questionnaire about the factors of anxiety in
speaking skill, such as lack
of vocabulary, lack of practice, lack of
preparation, fear of making mistake, inability to
express ideas, low english proficiency, being
focus attention. The percentages factors of anxiety
in speaking skill in the table below.
The percentage of anxiety fac-
tors
4750%
4700%
4650%
4600%
4550%
4500%
4450%
4400%
4350%
Excerpt 1
“I think I cannot speak in English because I dont
have good vocabuary.”
Excerpt 2
“I know it in bahasa Indonesia but I do not know
how to say it in English.”
In conclusion, the research’s findings show that
lack of vocabulary is the most causes of students in
learning speaking English.
CONCLUSION
There are seven factors leading to low students’
anxiety in learning English speaking skill by Liu
(2007) First, lack of vocabulary is the most
dominant factors anxious faced by low students,
there are 47,50% of respondents who feel anxious
in speaking skill because they have limited
vocabulary. Second, lack of preparation, there are
47,0% respondents who had anxiety in speaking
because they unprepared. Third, fear of making
mistakes, there are 47,0% of respondents who had
anxiety because they are afraid to speak if they
have mistakes. Fourth, low English proficiency,
there are 46% of respondents who felt anxious
because their English is poor. Fifth, fear of being
attention, there are 46% of respondents who felt
anxious because they felt uneasy if their friend
focused on him when speak English in front of
class. Sixth, lack of practice, there are 45%
respondents who had their feeling anxious in
speaking because they do not practice. And the last
inability to express ideas, there are 45% of
respondents who felt anxious because they do not
know what to say.
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