The study aimed to gain information about what made students felt anxious and what factors triggered students’ speaking anxiety in Academic Speaking class in English Language Education Program (ELEP) in a private university in Central Java, Indonesia. The participants of the study were 52 second-year ELEP students. A close-ended and open-ended questionnaire developed from Horwitz et al, (1986) and Angelia and Listyani (2019) were administered to the participants. The findings revealed that students’ speaking anxiety in English speaking class was derived from three main factors of anxiety, i.e. communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. Moreover, as the questionnaires answers and interview data revealed, lack of vocabulary, underestimate their ability, lack of preparation, being afraid of making mistakes, and worried of being embarassed at by his/her friends had also contributed to students’ anxiety in speaking. These findings suggest that the teachers’ role is very important in this situation. Students and teachers could build a positive classroom atmosphere in order to overcome students’ anxiety.
Writing is one of the most difficult skills in learning English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Foreign Language (EFL). Many language learners encountered difficulties from the writing process. At the tertiary level, students are required to produce academic essays, which are difficult and may frustrate students. The purpose of this study was to analyze factors contributing to students difficulties in an Academic Writing course based on the students perceptions. This study used a qualitative method. The instruments used were open-ended questionnaires and interview protocol. In this study, all the participants answers were coded and analyzed descriptively. The participants were 22 students who were taking Academic Writing class for repeaters in Semester I, 2018/2019 academic year, in an English Language Education Program, in a university in Central Java, Indonesia. Questionnaire data were coded and classified by the researcher. In conducting the interview, data were audio-recorded and transcribed. Those data were analyzed to answer the research questions in this study. Based on the findings, there were two factors that caused students difficulties in writing academically. The two factors were internal and external. Internal factors consisted of self-motivation, self-confidence, lack of knowledge and feeling of under pressure. External factors consisted of the teachers teaching style, classroom atmosphere, materials, and writing aspects. This research hopefully can help teachers and instructors in developing appropriate teaching techniques in Academic Writing and minimize students' difficulties in Academic Writing.
Speaking become one of the important skills among other skills such as listening, reading and writing. However, some students felt not confident to deliver words or sentences in English. The purpose of this study was to find teachers’ strategies to improve students’ self confidence in speaking at SMK 1 and SMK 2 in Tamiang Layang. This study used qualitative study with two instruments which are interview and observation. The participants were four teachers from two different schools which are SMK 1 and SMK 2. Based on the finding, there was found four strategies that the four teachers used in speaking class activity. Those strategies are role-play, small group discussion, storytelling, and songs. These strategies were very helpful to encourage students’ self confidence in speaking, because each strategy giving a chance for students to pratice speaking. Besides that, the advantages that students got from those, help students increase their vocabulary and pronunciation, build an interaction between passive and active students, and make the class more fun and not boring.Keywords: Speaking, self-confidence, teachers’ strategies.
Teaching practicum is a compulsory course for students majoring in education program. Through teaching practicum, student teachers can gain experiences before becoming real teachers. However, there are some students who still feel anxious towards teaching practicum. Therefore, this study aimed to find out the factors contributing to student teachers’ anxiety during teaching practicum and the strategies to cope with the anxiety. The participants of this study were six student teachers who had done their teaching practicum at a private senior high school in Central Java. The data were collected qualitatively by using semi-structured interviews to get in-depth information from the participants. The findings revealed that facing a new environment, school teachers and students’ attitudes, lesson plans and teaching materials, the ways of presenting the materials, time management, availability of AVAs, and observation by mentor teachers and the supervisor were the factors that contributed to student teachers’ anxiety during teaching practicum. The strategies used by student teachers to cope with their anxiety were adapting themselves with the new environment, preparing well before teaching, building good rapport with school teachers and students, creating a good learning environment, prioritizing the most crucial teaching part, and doing relaxation.
Academic Speaking class is the last speaking class that students at an English Language Education Program (ELEP) have to take. However, to pass this class is not very easy because the students had to be able to speak in an academic context. Seeing this phenomenon, the researchers tried to identify the second-year students’ difficulties in the Academic Speaking class, in a private university in Central Java. There are three research questions in this research, “What are ELEP second-year students’ speaking difficulties in Academic Speaking class?”, “What factors contribute to the speaking difficulties in Academic Speaking class?’, and What strategies do the Academic Speaking students employ to overcome the difficulties?”. This research used both qualitative and quantitative approaches that took place at an ELEP and involved 38 participants from three Academic Speaking classes. The data were taken using questionnaires and interviews. This study acknowledged 8 difficulties in speaking English, difficulties in dealing with anxiety, over-using mother tongue, giving a spontaneous response, learning unfamiliar and strange accents, expressing ideas, finding the right lexicon, ordering the right grammatical patterns, and dealing with a competitive environment. Subsequently, the factors which contributed to the difficulties were students’ lack of confidence and lack of vocabulary. The findings of the study are hoped to be advantageous for both students and teachers in the Academic Speaking class.
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