An Analysis of Factors Influencing Students’ State Anxiety in Situational Speaking Class

Abstract

The study is a qualitative study which aims to examine the factors influencing students’ state anxiety in Situational Speaking class. This study also investigates the circumstances that trigger students’ state anxiety as well as how they overcome it. The population of this study is the second-semester students of English Education Study Program. To determine the sample, the researcher use purposive sampling, and chose the students in Situational Speaking class C out of 3 classes as the sample. The aims of this study is to aid students and teachers in understanding anxiety especially state anxiety well and how to deal with state anxiety. State anxiety, linguistic factors, fear of negative evaluation (FNE), and self-confidence are the four key factors that influence whether students experience state anxiety while speaking English. The researcher use questionnaire and semi-structured interview to collect the data. The questionnaire of this study is an adaptation of the FLSAS (Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale) by Kayouglu and Saglamel to determine the frequency of students' state anxiety. To validate the data collected from the FLSAS, the researcher used method triangulation.  The study uses descriptive statistic and thematic analysis to analyze the data. The main theory of this study is come from Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) called Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA). Besides that, the researcher also use theory from Saviola, Pappiani, Monti, and Grecucci (2021) about the mapping of trait and state anxiety in human brain. From the data collected, the findings of this study suggest that the highest percentage of state anxiety factor is the general symptom of state anxiety (78,30%) followed by linguistic factors (76,66%), self-confidence (66,20%), and Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) (52,36%). Based on the data collected, anxiety among students is greatly influenced by the lecturers teaching style. Besides students’ self-aware to the mental issues symptoms, a variety innovative teaching techniques also help to lessen student’ state anxiety in speaking class.