EXPLORING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ANXIETY: A CASE OF HIGH ACHIEVER STUDENTS
Kecemasan berbicara dikenal sebagai kompetensi yang paling banyak menimbulkan kecemasan diantara kompetensi lainnya. Kecemasan berbicara membuat siswa memiliki kecemasan dalam bahasa asing yang mereka tuju. Bahkan siswa berprestasi sekalipun. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk (i) menemukan faktor kecemasan berbicara yang muncul pada siswa berprestasi dan (ii) bagaimana pengaruhnya terhadap kemampuan berbicara mereka. Penelitian kualitatif ini menggunakan metode fenomenologi deskriptif dalam menganalisis dan merinci data. Subyek penelitian diantaranya delapan siswa berprestasi di salah satu SMK Surabaya. Semua diwawancarai menggunakan diskusi kelompok. Hasil penelitian mengungkapkan (i) tiga faktor kecemasan berbicara dialami oleh siswa berprestasi yaitu, kecemasan komunikasi, ketakutan akan evaluasi negatif, dan kecemasan ujian bersama dengan elemen dari masing-masing faktor; (ii) beberapa kontribusi terbentuk dari persepsi siswa yang berprestasi. Contoh kontribusi positif adalah menjadikan kefasihan berbicara dalam bahasa Inggris sebagai tantangan yang harus mereka taklukkan. Sedangkan kontribusi negatifnya adalah perasaan gugup dan tidak nyaman saat berbicara di depan teman sebayanya, munculnya gejala kecemasan berbicara (jantung berdetak cepat, lupa, dan gagap) saat menyampaikan ide, enggan berbicara karena hubungan yang kurang dekat antara siswa dan guru Bahasa Inggris, dan lupa mengingat hal yang telah dipelajari selama tes berbicara.
Speaking anxiety is known as the most anxiety-evoking competence among other competencies. Speaking anxiety is significant to make students develop anxious feeling during speaking in the target foreign language. Even the high achiever students. Therefore, this research aimed to (i) discover speaking anxiety factor that could emerge in high achiever students and (ii) perceive high achievers’ speaking anxiety to their speaking performance. This qualitative research applied a decriptive phenomenological approach to analyze and elaborate on the data. The research subjects were eight high achiever students of one vocational school located in Surabaya. All of them were interviewed using focus group discussion to explore their speaking anxiety and its impact on them. The results revealed (i) three factors of speaking anxiety namely, communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety were experienced by high achiever students along with elements of each factor; (ii) several contributions were constructed according to high achievers’ perceptions. The example of a positive contribution was the consideration to take speaking fluency as a challenge they required to conquer. While negative contribution was such feeling nervous and uncomfortable to speak in front of their peers, led them to the spaking anxiety symptoms appearance (rapid heartbeat, blank, and stuttered) during conveying their ideas, being reluctant to speak due to weakened bond of students-instructor related, and struggling to recalibrate the memory during performing speaking tests.