SPEAKING-IN-CLASS ANXIETY OF ENGLISH-MAJORED UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The feeling of anxiety is commonly expressed in a language classroom by second/foreign language learners, and this feeling is considered to affect learners" speaking performance. The present study was conducted to investigate levels of in-class speaking anxiety experienced by the first-year English-majored students at the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen universityand find out the types of in-class speaking activities that provoke or reduce students" speaking anxiety. The research subjects were 101 students majoring in English in the two programs: English Education and English Language Programs. A survey questionnaire was employed to collect the data. The descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the students" anxiety about speaking English in classroom was at the high level. The findings also showed that the activities with high self-exposure requirement were the most anxiety evoking to students. On the other hand, the activities that give students a chance to work in pairs
or in groups; especially in class games caused the least anxiety to them. Finally, the pedagogical
implications for understanding second/foreign language anxiety and for enhancing learners"
communication abilities in the target language were discussed.