A Study of EFL Graduate Students'' Oral Presentation Anxiety

• Main Authors: Lei-yi Chen, 陳蕾伊
• Other Authors: Yuh-mei Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94015446692045309408

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國文學所 === 97 === This study aims to investigate graduate students’ anxiety level and identify sources of anxiety for academic oral presentation. The participants consisted of eighteen graduate students in a TEFL program of a university in southern Taiwan. They were required to read and present selected chapters orally twice in a testing course. All of the oral presentation performances were videotaped. Then, an interview was held with each presenter after each of the oral presentation in order to review his/her presentation video and discuss his/her feelings and thoughts about the oral presentation performance. PRPSA (Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety) was used to measure students’ levels and sources of anxiety. The data collected included 36 sets of classroom observation notes, 36 files of interview audio-recording (approximately seventeen hours), and 18 sets of questionnaire responses. Methods such as statistical analyses and content analysis were adopted and an attempt was made to triangulate multiple sources of data. Results of the study revealed that the students were moderately anxious, suggesting that the anxiety level was not too severe for the students to cope with. Two clusters of stressors were found to contribute to students’ anxiety – social and psychological. Social factors included peers’ response and audience familiarity; whereas psychological factors included self-perceived oral proficiency, self-perceived accuracy of pronunciation, and self-perceived personality. Moreover, first year students were found to be more anxious than the second year students and factors such as peers’ response and preparedness played a more important role for them. The present study suggests that it is important for teachers to reduce first year students’ anxiety by creating a supportive and low-threat classroom culture so that the students may feel more at ease. Teachers may also inform students of the importance of preparation as a stress-coping strategy.