The Relationship between Speaking Anxiety andSpeaking Strategies among University Students in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Ruei-Ling Li, 李睿羚
• Other Authors: Tsae-Tzy Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47537303380497567611

碩士 === 國立屏東教育大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === This research investigates the relationship between speaking anxiety and speaking strategies among university students in Taiwan. With randomly stratified sampling, the researcher recruited 309 non-English freshmen and sophomores in National Pingtung University of Education to answer two scales: Speaking Anxiety Scale (adapted from Huang’s (2005) FLSAS) and Speaking Strategies Scale (adapted from Nakatani’s (2006) OCSI). Descriptive statistics, MANOVA, canonical correlation, Pearson correlation and multiple regression using SPSS were utilized to analyze the data. Some results will be illustrated below. First, Taiwanese university students suffer from ‘test anxiety’ most. Second, they apply ‘nonverbal strategy’ most and ‘social strategy’ least when speaking English. Third, in terms of the influence of background variables on speaking anxiety, there is no statistically significant difference between males and females on the three categories of speaking anxiety. People who learn English earlier have lower ‘test and communication apprehension’ while speaking English. Low English proficient students have significantly higher ‘communication apprehension’ than those with high English proficiency. Fourth, as for the influence of background variables on speaking strategies, females apply strategies more often than males when speaking English. People who started to learn English from junior high school significantly use more ‘reduction strategy’ than those who began to learn English from kindergarten. The higher English proficiency students have, the more speaking strategies they tend to utilize. Fifth, ‘test anxiety’ has the highest positive correlation with speaking anxiety. Except reduction strategy, the other six speaking strategies present a significantly negative correlation with speaking anxiety. At last, among variables of the seven speaking strategies and background variables, ‘reduction strategy’ is the best predictor of speaking anxiety, followed by fluency-oriented and social strategy. The finding of the study suggests that teachers should help students decrease speaking anxiety by teaching them some useful speaking strategies.