Index

1. INTRODUCTION

Classroom presentation is one of the most interesting methods employed by instructors at schools and colleges. To be successful in a classroom presentation, students as classroom community need to have certain competences. They should be competent enough to discuss argumentative topics, should have strategies to handle all types of situations during a classroom presentation, and should have the ability to communicate their ideas appropriately. Classroom presentation in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) for students from a non-English department has its own challenge. The reason is that learning a foreign language (FL) or a second language (L2) demands extra efforts. Abu Rabia (2004) argues that learning an additional language demands cognitive and emotional efforts and describes this affective variable as “anxiety of FL learning.” Many studies have dealt with issues related to  Anxiety in learning  a Foreign Language (FL) or a Second Language (L2) (Young, 1986; MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994; Saito and Samimy, 1996; Cheng, 2002; Abu Rabia, 2004; Oya et al., 2004; Bögels and Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Liu, 2006; Sansgiry and Sail, 2006; Woodrow, 2006; Vitasari et al., 2010; Liu and Huang, 2011; Trang et al., 2012; Piniel and Csizér, 2013; Timina, 2015; Wang and Roopchund, 2015; Arjanggi and Kusumaningsih, 2016; Mohammadian and Dolatabadi, 2016; Jafari et al., 2018; Weda and Sakti, 2018; Weda and Sakti, 2018; Weda et al., 2018) .  All these studies have found Anxiety playing a significant role in language teaching – learning process, for instance, Liu and Huang, 2011 assert that Anxiety, which though sometimes facilitating, is predominantly devastating in acquisition of a second language (L2) or a foreign language (FL).  

Arjanggi and Kusumaningsih (2016) argue that anxiety is one of the several symptoms associated with the first experience at the time of entering the world of college freshmen. Researchers in second or foreign language acquisition have increasingly recognized the existence of anxiety as a fairly common phenomenon among students (Saito and Samimy, 1996). Young (1986) cited in Saito and Samimy (1996) find  that foreign language anxiety may manifest itself through psycholinguistic factors such as “distortion of sounds”, inability to reproduce the intonation and rhythm of a language, “freezing up” when called on to perform, and forgetting words or phrases just learned or simply refusing to speak and remaining silent.

The present study investigates the following research question: To what extent, does Anxiety in classroom presentation affect Teaching – Learning Interaction in English at Faculty of Languages and Literature at Universitas Negeri Makassar?

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE  

2.1. Anxiety

Anxiety is a feeling of dread, fear, or apprehension, often with no clear justification (Dollah, 2016). Sigmund Freud viewed anxiety as the symptomatic expression of the inner emotional conflict caused when one  is suppressed by  conscious awareness of experiences, feelings, or impulses that are too threatening or disturbing to live with (Dollah, 2016). Numerous studies have revealed that students’ anxiety exists in almost every aspect of second or foreign language learning (Liu, 2006). Researchers have accepted the fact that personality traits such as self-esteem, inhibition, anxiety, risk-taking and extraversion, may determine the  ultimate success in mastering a foreign language (Kralova and Petrova, 2017). Horowitz & Young in Abu-Rabia, (2004) state that anxiety is perceived as a “state” anxiety that arises in a wide variety of situations or events such as : public speaking, exams, and class participation. This is the evidence that anxiety along with other personality traits occurs in a variety of situations including the classroom presentation.

Participants who are more extrovert produce better global impressions during their oral performance, and those who  experience  higher level of anxiety commit more errors in their spoken English particularly in construction of a sentence (Oya et al., 2004). Lowering the level of debilitating anxiety, or enhancing self-efficacy can however increase the amount of effort invested in language learning in a  classroom setting, which in turn is likely to lead to learners’ positive experiences and could further enhance learner’s self-efficacy (Piniel and Csizér, 2013). Foreign language anxiety can also have a negative impact on learners’ performance (Saito and Samimy, 1996). Foreign language and Second Language anxiety is predominantly debilitating in a L2/FL learning, and high-anxious students tend to perform worse than their low-anxious peers; they also tend to speak (more) briefly and sometimes even inaudibly (Liu and Huang, 2011).  To reduce behavior and psychological problems such as low motivation, stress, and anxiety in language learning process, which potentially contribute to the students’ low achievement, students need to adjust their learning and environment. In fact, social environment and family environment are much beneficial to learning outcomes particularly in the acquisition of L2/FL.

The family environment acts as a cornerstone in a microsystem that not only directly influences adolescent behavior of students at schools, internalizing and externalizing their behavioral problems, but also indirectly influences the entire individual self-system (Chen and Luo, 2016). Adolescents' perceptions of school stress can also  moderate the association between family dysfunction and anxiety which can be  stronger under conditions of all such perceptions of school and higher education stress (Guo et al., 2018).

A student often has a profile characterized by an accumulation of problems, the  information which is not readily available when considering each problem separately (Olivier et al., 2018). Such information if made available can be uniquely useful for forecasting students’ future engagements or achievement problems in the learning process, as perceived by teachers and students themselves. However, it is also apprehended that students who are at risk on multiple fronts would be particularly vulnerable to disengagement and low academic achievement. If so, they should be priority targets for multi-pronged interventions (Olivier et al., 2018).

2.2. Anxiety in Classroom Presentation

One of the emotional and psychological factors in the classroom presentation is anxiety which contributes to changes in one’s behavior and articulation. Evidence from perceptual studies argue that confidence is communicated significantly through the speaker’s tone of voice, or speech prosody —i.e., through changes in pitch and temporal parameters that make speech sound doubtful, certain, authoritative, or submissive. In addition, confidence is also conveyed by the speaker’s choice of linguistic structures e.g., modal adverbs or probability phrases, such as may be, definitely and like (Jiang and Pell, 2017). In agreement with Jiang & Pell’s statement, Deb and Dandapat (2017) argue that the characteristics of speech signal change under stress conditions. Due to this, the performance of machine is affected in case of human-machine interaction. The causes of such stress can be any specific emotion, sleep deprivation, perceived threat, glottal abnormalities, workload, or noisy environments.  Experts have detected anxiety in public speakers through their  speech clarity, breathing patterns, vocal variety, and pace (Goberman et al., 2011).

A situational dimension of school anxiety and a broader analysis is necessary in order to determine the relationship between school refusal behavior and different school situations that can generate anxiety including School Punishment Anxiety, Victimization Anxiety, Social Evaluation Anxiety and School Evaluation Anxiety. Such situations can be interpreted under three response systems including Cognitive, Behavioral and Psychophysiological (Gonzálvez et al., 2018).

3. METHOD

3.1. Participants

The participants in this study were sixty two students of undergraduate program of Indonesian Study Program of Faculty of Languages and Literature, Universitas Negeri Makassar who were attending Interaksi Belajar Mengajar (Teaching Learning Interaction) subject. There were 55 or 88.71% females and 7 or 11.29% males studying in the seventh (42 or 67.75%) and ninth (20 or 32.25%) semesters of the program.

3.2. Instruments and Procedures

A questionnaire adapted from MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) was used to assess students’ Anxiety in Indonesian classrooms. Data was collected in July and August 2018. The students were asked to fill in the questionnaire which consisted of 15 items and rate various aspects of Anxiety on a 5-point Likert scale showing 1 = Strongly disagree; 2 = Disagree; 3 = Neither agree nor disagree; 4 = Agree; and 5 = Strongly agree. All negatively worded items were reverse scored in order to keep the high scores on  the instrument to represent a high level of anxiety. The Cronbach’s alpha computed for the anxiety instrument showed that the anxiety instrument was sufficiently reliable.

3.3. Data Analysis

Data was coded and analyzed using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics 9.0 which revealed the mean score, standard deviation (SD), percentage, and sum. These statistical items were used to determine the extent to which students felt Anxiety in classroom presentation in Interaksi Belajar Mengajar (Teaching Learning Interaction) subject.

3.4. Reliability Testing

Reliability testing of the questionnaire was done to test the questionnaire  as a reliable data collection tool. This reliability test used the "one shot" technique or one-time measurement done by making  a correlation comparison  of  responses  to questionnaire items that were  considered reliable if Cronbach's Alpha was > 0.5. Reliability test results for 15 statement items in the questionnaire can be seen in table 1.

Table-1. Reliability Test Calculation Results

Source: Reliability Statistics SPSS Statistics 17.0

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A total of 62 students, 55 or 88.71% females and 7 or 11.29% males participated in this study. The students were from the seventh semester (42 or 67.75%) and ninth semester (20 or 32.25%). The demographic profile of participants is presented in table 2.

Table-2. Demographics of Participants

Source: Demographic Information of Participants from Research Questionnaire

The primary focus of this present study was to explore students’ anxiety in classroom presentation in the Interaksi Belajar Mengajar subject in English. In order to investigate the broad profiles of students’ anxiety in classroom presentation, the mean, standard deviation (SD), and sum were calculated.

As per data shown in table 3, the students’ anxiety was arranged according to the mean score and standard deviation (SD). The highest response of statement number 1 was Disagree (I am not bothered by someone speaking quickly in classroom presentation) with 38.7%. In Statement 2, 38.7% of respondents considered that “I get upset when someone speaks too quickly.” An overwhelming majority 90.3% agreed (62.9% of them Strongly) that “The only time that I feel comfortable during classroom presentation is when I have had a lot of time to study.” Over 4/5th of the respondents agreed that “I feel anxious if classroom presentation seems disorganized” (88.8%), and that “I am self-confident in by ability to appreciate the meaning of dialogue in classroom presentation” (53.2%). The highest response of statement number 6 was Disagree (I do not worry when I hear new or unfamiliar words) with 35.5%.

Table-3. Frequencies and rank of each of students’ perception on Study anxiety in classroom presentation

Source: Data from Research Questionnaire

The highest response of statement number 7 (I never feel tense when I have to explain materials) was Agree with 32.3%. The highest response for statement number 8 (I never feel tense when I have to answer the questions) was neither Neither Agree nor Disagree with 33.9%. The highest response for statement number 9 “I get upset when I know how to communicate something in classroom presentation but I just cannot verbalize it” was Neither Agree Nor Disagree with 37.1%. The highest response for statement number 10 (I never get nervous when writing something for my classroom presentation) was Agree with 40.3%. The highest response for statement number 11 (When I become anxious during a classroom presentation, I cannot remember anything I studied) was Neither Agree Nor Disagree with 35.5%. The highest response for statement number 12 (I enjoy just listening to someone explaining the material presentation) was Neither Agree Nor Disagree with 51.6%. The highest responses for statement number 13 (I always get nervous when answering participants’ questions in the classroom presentation) was neither Agree nor disagree with 33.9%. The highest response for statement number 14 (I never get nervous when presenting topic discussion in the classroom presentation) was Agree with 33.9%. The highest response for the statement number 15 (I become anxious when someone asks difficult questions) was neither Agree nor disagrees with 50.1%.

The findings reveal that a majority of students have stated that they get upset if their classmates speak quickly in the classroom presentation. The students also emphasized that if they were provided more time to study, they would feel comfortable during the classroom presentation.

The students therefore claim that anxiety occurs if the classroom presentation is not organized well. The students also get nervous when they know what to communicate in the classroom presentation but they cannot verbalize it. The more the students feel the Anxiety in classroom presentation, the more they fail to recall that they had prepared before the classroom discussion. The students also get nervous when they are asked questions that they find difficult or while presenting the topic of the discussion. On the other hand, as listeners to classroom presentations, the students agree that they do not feel any anxiety when they hear difficult words, nor they get nervous when the teacher explains certain topic in the classroom. They rather enjoy just listening to someone explaining a topic or present some material in the classroom presentation
As stated in table 3 that almost all items were responded by students in high percentage, mainly the data about the disorganized classroom presentation. It is therefore concluded that anxiety is contributive factors in students’ low achievement in the classroom.

5. CONCLUSION

The results of the study indicate that the most frequent source of students’ anxiety was attending disorganized classroom presentation while a well prepared and well-managed classroom made them feel more relaxed in learning a foreign (FL) or second language (L2). Other evidences from the study are: 1) the only time that the students feel contented during classroom presentation is when they have a lot of time to study and to design and prepare material for classroom presentation 2) the more the students feel the anxiety in classroom presentation, the more they fail to recall the materials they have prepared for classroom presentation, 3) the students get nervous when someone asks difficult questions. The study therefore concludes that anxiety contributes to the students’ low achievement in the classroom presentation. The implication of the study is that anxiety is an interesting phenomenon in language study which potentially contributes to students’ failure, therefore teachers at a university need to manage the class well and give a lot of time for students to learn the topics for discussion.

Since this study focuses its investigation at the university level, other researchers are recommended to confine their investigation on anxiety in elementary and secondary school levels to know the contribution of anxiety in the classroom setting in a wide variety of classroom activities.

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Appendix: Questionnaire
Respondent Identity:
Name                     :
Sex                         :
Age                         :
Study Program:
Semester               :

Questionnaire
Choose one of the following choices which reveal how much you agree or disagree by circling around. Remember that there is no right or wrong answer.

1. Strongly disagree
2. Disagree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Agree
5. Strongly agree

Adapted fromMacIntyre and Gardner (1994)