THE STUDY OF SPEAKING ANXIETY AND STRATEGIES ON COMMUNICATIVE SPEAKING TASKS OF NON-ENGLISH MAJOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to 1) investigate communicative English speaking anxiety of non-English major undergraduate students and 2) examine communicative English speaking strategies of non-English major undergraduate students. Research sample consisted of 40 third-year students enrolled in English for inter-office communication course, during the second semester of academic year 2022, at Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University under the Royal Patronage. The survey research instruments included 1) speaking anxiety questionnaire 2) speaking strategies questionnaire 3) semi-structure interview questions and 4) observation form, both questionnaires were examined to construct validity and Cronbach’s alpha reliability found as 0.83 and 0.87 respectively. Quantitative data were collected and analyzed by descriptive statistics, including frequency distribution, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Data gathered from interview and participant observation were analyzed by content analysis technique.
The results of this study indicated that students had anxiety in speaking English at a moderate level (mean=62 scores). They had speaking anxiety when being tested at the high level (mean=3.78). Besides, they used speaking strategies at a moderate level (mean=3.35). Among the groups of speaking strategies, they chose to use message reduction and alternation strategies at the high level (mean= 3.59). According to the research findings, suggestion was given to emphasize that teacher should promote a good learning atmosphere to help non-English major students to reduce their anxiety in English speaking activities and integrate a variety of speaking strategies in teaching as an approach to help students develop their speaking skills.