ANXIETY IN SPEAKING ENGLISH AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN PONTIANAK

Abstract

Studies on learning anxiety of EFL learners have been done by many educators. Different experts have investigated the issue of learning anxiety from different perspectives. It is believed that students' anxiety has an impact on language learning, especially in learning speaking. In Indonesia, English is learned as a foreign language at high school levels. This study intended to investigate the anxiety factors in the speaking performance that faced by grade 12 students at SMA Santu Petrus in Pontianak. There are two purposes of this study (1) To investigate the factors that cause students to feel anxious when they speak English, and (2) to find out the most dominant factors that cause the students’ anxiety in speaking English. Data were analyzed using a qualitative descriptive method and were obtained by conducting interviews and observation. The findings indicated that there were factors that triggered the feeling of anxiety among the students when they speak English, namely: rumination, fear of feedback and avoidance and the most dominant factor was avoidance.