how to overcome fear to speak English

How to Overcome The Fear of Student in to Speak English

Abstract

The study aims to find out factors that hinder students from speaking and the causes of the factors as well as the possible solutions to overcome the factors. In terms of findings, the study revealed that factors such as fear of making mistake, shyness, anxiety, lack of confidence and lack of motivation hinder students from speaking in English class. Those factors, like fear of making mistakes, were commonly caused by their fear of being laughed at by their friends. The possible solution to overcome those factors, most students believed that motivating them to be more confident to speak English is worth considering. This finding suggests that the teachers should be more aware of their students’ hindrance to speak in English class.

Introduction

In the teaching of English, as one of the productive skills, speaking activity must focus on how to assist students to use and to communicate in English (Richard, 2008). The most they success in learning language is they can improve in their speaking prociency. That is why teachers’ efforts should be focused on developing students’ ability to speak since learning to speak is considered as the greatest challenge for all language learners (Pinter, 2006). In this sense, teachers have to give more opportunities to their students to express themselves by providing them with speaking activities that enable them to speak English (Brown, 2001). From this, that found factors such as shyness and anxiety are considered as the main causes of students’ reluctance to speak (Brown, 2001). The students’ problem in speaking is caused mostly by their shyness or anxiety (Gebhard 2000). All these indicate the importance for teachers to help students reduce those feelings to maximize their learning to speak in English. The aim of this paper is to explain how to overcome the  fear of students in to speak English and to finding the way how the student not fear anymore to speak English.

A. Definition of fear

             The definition of fear is: An unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger and accompanied by increased autonomic activity. Fear can be a very powerful and unpleasant emotion( A Merriam Webster ). it means that fear is feeling of that belongs to by humans who often makes people feel uncomfortable.

B. Factor Student Fear to Speak English

            Most students are afraid to speak English was their fear of making mistakes, embarrassment, anxiety, his lack of confidence and his lack of motivation in speaking English.. Burns and Joyce in Nunan (1999); Schwartz (2005); and Thornbury (2005) argue that psychological factors such as anxiety or shyness, lack of confidence, lack of motivation, and fear of mistakes are the factors commonly that hinder students from speaking.

It has been mentioned earlier that there are some factor that hinder students from practicing their speaking in English class. Each of them is explained below:

Fear of Mistake

As argued by many theorists, fear of mistake becomes one of the main factors of students’ reluctance to speak in English in the classroom (Tsui in Nunan, 1999; Yi Htwe, 2007; Robby, 2010). With respect to the fear of making mistake issue, Aftat, (2008) adds that this fear is linked to the issue of correction and negative evaluation. In addition, this is also much influenced by the students’ fear of being laughed at by other students or beingcriticized by the teacher. As a result, students commonly stop participating in the speaking activity (Hieu, 2011).Therefore, it is important for teachers to convince their students that making mistakes is not a wrong or bad thing because students can learn from their mistakes.

Causes of Fear of Mistake

The primary reason of fear of mistake is that students are afraid of looking foolish in front of other people and  they are concerned about how other will see them (Kurtus, 2001). In addition, Hieu (2011) and Zang (2006) cited  in He and Chen (2010) explain that students feel afraid of the idea of making mistakes as they are worried that their friends will laugh at them and receive negative evaluations from their peers if they make mistake in  speaking English. Students’ fear of making mistakes in speaking English has been a common issue especially in

 an EFL context like in Indonesia. As argued by Middleton (2009), most EFL students are afraid to try and to  speak in a foreign language they learn. In this context, as he adds, students do not want to look foolish in front of  the class. In some other cases, they also worry about how they will sound, and are scared of sounding silly and  so on

Shyness

Shyness is an emotional thing that many students suffer from at some time when they are required to speak in  English class. This indicates that shyness could be a source of problem in students’ learning activities in the  classroom especially in the class of speaking. Therefore, paying attention on this aspect is also quite important in  order to help the students do their best in their speaking performance in the classroom (Gebhard, 2000).  Baldwin (2011) further explains that speaking in front of people is one of the more common phobias that students encounter and feeling of shyness makes their mind go blank or that they will forget what to say. This theory is also supported by the result of this research in which most students fail to perform the speaking  performance at their best. As they say, their inability to show their ability in speaking is also influenced much by  their feeling of shyness. In other words, it can be said that shyness plays an important role in speaking performance done by the students.

Causes of Shyness

With regard to the cause of shyness, Bowen (2005) and Robby (2010) argue that some shy learners are caused by  their nature that they are very quiet. In this case, the students are not very confident and tend to be shy because  most of them find it very intimidating when speaking English in front of their friends and teacher. In addition,  Saurik (2011) indentifies that most of English students feel shy when they speak the language because they think  they will make mistakes when they talk. They are also afraid of being laughed at by their peers. This fact is also  found in the data of this study that students’ shyness is their perception on their own ability. In this sense, they  are afraid of being laughed at by their friends due to their low ability in speaking English.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling of tension, apprehension and nervousness associated with the situation of learning a foreign language (Horwitz et all cited in Nascente, 2001). Further Nascente said that among other affective variables, anxiety stands out as one of the main blocking factors for effective language learning. In other words, anxiety influences students in learning language. Therefore, paying attention to this factor of learning should also be taken into consideration. The fact that anxiety plays an important role in students’ learning is also shared by other researchers like Horwitz (1991) as cited in Sylvia and Tiono (2004). He believes that anxiety about speaking a certain language can affect students’ performance. It can influence the quality of oral language production and make individuals

appear less fluent than they really are. This explanation suggests that teachers should make an attempt to create a learning atmosphere which gives students more comfortable situations in their learning activity.

Causes of Anxiety

Regarding the causes of anxiety, Horwitz and Cope (1986, in Zhao Na, 2007) based on the findings of their study, found out three main causes of students’ anxiety i.e communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. The communication apprehension refers to the students’ ability to communicate in the target language. Their low ability in this aspect, in many cases, causes anxious feeling among many students. The second cause which is test anxiety deals with students’ fear of being tested. The last cause has to do with other students’ evaluation. In this case, as mentioned above, very often that other students’ evaluation causes anxiety among students themselves. In addition, fear of being evaluated by their teachers is also another factor affecting students’ anxiety (Liu, 2007; Zhou, et all 2004). All these show that understanding students better and being skillful in managing classroom should be part of the teachers’ concern. As suggested by Harmer (2007), to reduce this anxiety feeling, teachers need to pay attention to each students’ strengths and weaknesses so that they can create a learning method which accommodates all students in the classroom.

Lack of Confidence

It is commonly understood that students’ lack of confidence usually occurs when students realize that their conversation partners have not understood them or when they do not understand other speakers. In this situation,they would rather keep silent while others do talking showing that the students are lack of confidence to communicate. In response to this, Tsui cited Nunan (1999) says that student who lack of confidence about themselves and their English necessarily suffer from communication apprehension. This shows that building students’ confidence is an important part of teacher’s focus of attention. This means that the teacher should also learn from both theories and practical experience on how to build the students’ confidence.

Causes of Lack of Confidence

He and Chen (2010) state the main cause of students’ confidence is their low ability in speaking English. In this case, as they add, many students think that their English is bad and feel that they can not speak English well. The other cause of students’ lack of confidence also deals with the lack of encouragement from the teacher (Brown, 2001). In this context, many teachers do not think that convincing students that they are able to speak English is important. As a result, as Brown adds, students find the learning demotivating rather than motivating. This suggests that encouragement becomes a vital thing in order to build the students’ confidence. Therefore, giving students encouragement and showing that they will be able to communicate well in English plays a role in

students’ success of learning.

 Lack of Motivation

It is mentioned in the literature that motivation is a key to students’ learning success (Songsiri, 2007). With regard to the issue of motivation in learning, Nunan (1999) stresses that motivation is important to notice in that it can affect students’ reluctance to speak in English. In this sense, motivation is a key consideration in determining the preparedness of learners to communicate. Zua (2008) further adds that motivation is an inner energy. She says that no matter what kinds of motivation the learners possess it will enhance their study interest. It has been proven in many studies that students with a strong motivation to succeed can persist in learning and gain better scores than those who have weaker motivation of success showing that building students motivation to learn is urgent for every teacher.

Causes of Lack of Motivation

With respect to the causes of lack of motivation, Gardner in Nunan (1999) elaborates the causes of the students’ lack of motivation e.g. uninspired teaching, boredom, lack of perceived relevance of materials and lack of knowledge about the goals of the instructional program. These four, as he further says, very often become source of students’ motivation. Uninspired teaching, for example, affects students’ motivation to learn. In this context, a monotonous teaching, in many cases, reduces the students’ motivation due to their feeling of boredom. This shows that paying attention to those four factors is vital. In response to the issue of motivation, Babu (2010) argues that lack of motivation in learning causes students’ hesitation to speak English in the classroom. He says that the background of this situation is that students are not motivated by the teachers towards the communication in English. In line with what Babu says, Siegel (2004, in Aftat, 2008) believes that motivation is a product of good teaching. In his further explanation, Aftat emphasizes that to motivate students to learn well and actively communicate in English, teachers should have passion, creativity and interest in their students. In other words, students’ motivation is really influenced by the teachers’ teaching performance. Therefore, it is important that teachers also show enthusiasm in their teaching performance.

C. Solution to Overcome fear of  Student

           

Fear of Mistake

With regard to fear of mistake, the students gave the solution to overcome this difficulty. Some of them wrote that improving self confidence became the solution to conquer their fear of mistake.

Students feel afraid of making mistake as they are worried that their friends will laugh at them and receive negative evaluations from their peers if they make mistake in speaking and they are afraid of looking foolish in front of other people (Kurtus, 2001; Kim, 2006; and Frank Middleton, 2009). Thus, it’s very necessary for the teachers to convince their students that they do not have to worry to express their ideas by speaking since the language is a foreign language that everyone in the class is also studying the language.

In other words it’s natural if they make mistake. Regarding this, Zua (2008) notices that how to treat students’ mistakes in communication will become the key to carry out a communication. Further she argues if the teacher corrects a students’ error at an unsuitable time he will lose his confidence. Additionally, the teachers are also suggested to help their students to develop their self confidence in order to be able to speak in English class as what the students mentioned above. Besides the solution that has been described above, other solutions was also expressed by the students. Those statements seem to be reasonable since as it has been mentioned above, students are worried to receive negative evaluations, and therefore they asked their friends first. They feel more comfortable to ask their friends in order to avoid negative comments. This condition is relevant with Tsui’s suggestion (1996) as cited in Babu (2010). As she said that allowing students to check their answers with their peers before offering them to the whole class can encourage students to speak up.

This is actually a sign that students need to feel comfort with their teachers and believe that the teachers will help them if they make mistake. In addition, teachers should encourage students to ask for help without running the risk of embarrassment since mistakes are considered as a natural part of learning a foreign language.

Shyness

With respect to overcome shyness, some students mentioned that they should do more practice to speak English to reduce their shyness .What they expected is consistent with the argument that one way to overcome students’ shyness is to give students to take opportunity to practice a lot. It will improve their skills of speaking. This condition for sure will make them get used to try to speak (Yeon Lim, 2003). comment may support the idea that that one way to overcome shyness is by looking upon shyness as a thing to overcome it, Chinmoy (2007). Further Chinmoy adds that teachers should encourage the students in order to realize that being shyness is not a good thing because it will prevent them from improving their speaking. If students can see shyness as a bad thing, they will be in a position to try and to overcome it.

 Anxiety

To turn to possible solution to overcome anxiety some students expected that their teachers should motivate them to speak English. The expectation coincide with the argument that provide students with positive reinforcement, motivate students and create an ease environment in class are important to be noticed since it can lower students’ anxiety, increase their confidence, and encourage their willingness to communicate (Noon-ura, 2008; Kitano, 2001 cited in Keramida, 2009).

Teachers should concern with this finding since it is a proof that students need motivation from their teachers. Motivation from the teachers can give great affect to students when they are trying to speak English to express their ideas. This condition relates to the importance of motivation since it is an inner energy (Zua, 2008). It has been proved that students with a strong motivation to succeed can persist in learning.

Lack of Confidence

Regarding lack of confidence, These suggestions relate to the idea of the importance of maximizing students’ exposure to English and allowing students to experience repeated success with second language use as the strategies to build students’ confidence (Benson, 1991; Dörnyei 2001 as cited in Kubo 2009; and Ye Htwe 2007;). In response to this idea, Kubo (2009) further adds that to build students’ confidence to speak English, teachers can provide regular opportunities to practice proper pronunciation and intonation, and to converse freely, thus it will make students experienced a greater sense of ability to speak English. Therefore teacher should create a comfortable atmosphere in which learners are encouraged to talk in English and are praised for talking. In other words, the students need to know that teacher does not expect them to speak perfect English and teacher realizes it takes time and effort for them to learn to converse in English.

Lack of Motivation

These solutions are in line with Aftat’s (2008) suggestion that in order to encourage students’ motivation teachers should provide constant encouragement and support and ask questions that reveal the basis of a student’s problems. Regarding this, several solutions to overcome students’ lack of motivation proposed by Dornyei in Pinter (2006) and Liu and Huang (2010) can be applied by the teachers in order to help their students to overcome their lack of motivation. Dornyei (2001) in Pinter (2006) notices four stages to encourage students’ motivation as follows:

The first stage is to create motivating condition for learning. This means creating a pleasant and supportive environment in the classroom.

The second stage is to introduce initial motivating techniques by creating materials that are relevant for the students.

The next stage is to take care to maintain and to protect students’ motivation by offering stimulating activities and fostering self-esteem, self-confidence, and co-operation among students.

The last stage is to turn evaluation and feedback into positive experiences.

D . Definition of Speaking

            Speaking skill is the art of communications and one of 4 productive skill, that must mastered in learning foreign language .speak means to produce some words representing one’s ideas. It

is a process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts (Chaney, 1998 in Kayi, 2006)..Good speaking skills is the act of generating words that can be understood by listeners. A good speaker is clear and informative.

E. Type of speaking

ESL (English as a second language) courses and schools focus on the four major components of any language: reading, writing, listening and speaking. For students who speak languages that are drastically different than English in terms of grammar, sentence structure and syntax, learning how to effectively speak English is often the largest hurdle.

Pronunciation

Proper pronunciation allows for clear understanding between the speaker and the listener. If words are pronounced improperly, the listener may not entirely understand what the speaker is attempting to convey, especially if the word that was mispronounced sounds similar to another word with a different meaning. Since language is used to express a thought, proper pronunciation -- including a speaker's accent -- is essential to ensure comprehension.

Intonation Patterns

Similar to the importance of pronunciation, accurate intonation patterns are an essential element of ESL speaking skills. Intonation means how clearly you speak by stressing specific syllables or words of a sentence. Although the rise and fall of speech is an important element of intonation, stress plays a more significant role. The meaning of a sentence can drastically change based on word stress. For example, in the sentence "This bag is mine," if you stress "this," the meaning of the sentence changes: "This bag is mine (not that bag)." Similarly, if a speaker stresses "bag" he is trying to convey that the bag is his, not the notebook or the pencil.

Natural Pacing

Natural pacing means how fluid your speech is. Native English speakers speak with a clear and fluid pace that helps the flow of the ideas they are trying to convey. Hesitations or pauses within a sentence can impede comprehension, as the listener must increase his focus in order to understand what the speaker is trying to express. Pacing is a difficult skill to master and requires many years of ESL studying before it is natural.

Use of Grammar and Vocabulary

            A strong understanding of grammar is the foundation of speaking in English. Without it, a speaker will struggle to formulate sentences and therefore will have trouble conveying his ideas. Similarly, effective speaking skills require a large vocabulary. Grammar is the ability to combine words together to create sentences that are clearly understandable. Although perfect grammar is not essential to communicating in English, it is a key element in speaking naturally. If an ESL student wishes to convey a complex idea, proper grammar is required to express it; simple grammar can allow you only to "get by." However, if a student is serious about the English language, a deep study of grammar is required, although grammar does not need to be studied as strictly as other aspects of the language. Exposure to the English language in itself is an effective form of studying grammar and the rules of the language.

CONCLUSION

            It can be concluded that the students have psychological factors such as fear
guilt, shyness, anxiety, and the like that prevent them to practice speaking in English. factors such as the fear of making mistakes, which is often caused by their fear of being laughed at by their friends. other than that in terms of shyness, the students said that their shame caused by their nature a shy person. solutions to overcome the fear of speaking is to motivate yourself. Motivate students to speak in English, to a certain extent, encourage them to participate actively in talks class. All this shows the importance of creating an atmosphere that supports learning in the classroom.