Factors affecting anxiety of English Department Students in their speaking performance

As English has become much more important, speaking seems to be the most important skill to learn. However, speaking is considered as one of the most difficult aspects of language learning (Brown & Yule, 1983). Even though students in Indonesia have learnt English since they were in elementary school, most of them still find difficulties in using English orally. It is not because they do not master the language, but they might experience anxiety. As anxiety becomes the main source of most of the students’ problem, so the researcher conducted this study. It aims at investigating the internal and external factors affecting anxiety of English Department students in their speaking performance and to decide the factors which contribute the most. The study was conducted at Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya, with the participation of 41 English Department students who were joining Speaking A course. Thus, to reveal the factors contributing to anxiety, the researcher used FLCAS questionnaire, then to investigate the factors contributing the most, the researcher conducted an interview. The situations are considered to be factors provoking anxiety if total of the respondents agreed to them are more than 40% (Pramuktiyono, 2013). The result showed there were six factors affecting anxiety, namely self perception, self-comparison, fear of making mistakes, feedback during speaking anxiety, test anxiety, and classroom anxiety. Moreover, the result of this study also showed that English Department students were more affected by the internal factors rather than the external ones