ANXIETY IN ORAL PRESENTATIONS AMONG ESL STUDENTS

Abstract

This study examines the possible causes of anxiety in oral presentations among students who are
currently taking English subjects in UiTM Dungun Campus. Communication apprehension especially
in doing oral presentations is inevitable among ESL (English as A Second Language) students. This
natural phenomenon occurs due to several factors by taking diverse students’ backgrounds into account.
However, there are also other factors that may contribute to the students’ anxiety. The respondents were
invited to answer a set of questionnaire using Google Forms ™. The questionnaire was adapted and
modified from Al-Nouh (2015). A few alterations were made to the questionnaire so as to fit the
respondents’ perceptions. From the survey, several factors of anxiety in oral presentations were
perceived; language ability, personality traits, preparation and audience interest. Overall, the findings
showed that all these four factors did affect the students’ oral presentations. Several implications of the
findings were discussed which include setting a friendly and stimulating class environment to cater to
the different students’ learning needs, sharing the scoring rubrics for students’ preparation beforehand,
encouraging positive attitude among the audience members and emphasizing fluency more than
accuracy while using English. It is hoped that the ideas and suggestions discussed will provide the
lecturers with basic guidelines of how to improve the students’ command of English language through
oral presentation assessments and help the students to work their way out of anxiety.