Students’ perception in small group discussion to overcome their speaking anxiety : A case study in UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung

The purpose of this study is to reveal how students feel about adopting a small group discussion strategy to help them overcome their fear of public speaking. It was primarily aimed to determine the following objectives: 1). To know about the students’ speaking anxiety level, 2). To find about different perspectives of students in the English Education Department on the utilization of small group discussion techniques, 3) To find about the factors that contribute to students' speaking anxiety in English classes. This study employs the qualitative method and was designed as a case study involving twenty-five students from the English Education Department at UIN Sunan Guung Djati Bandung in the academic year 2018/2019 who had been studying all subjects related to speaking. The researcher used a questionnaire and an interview to collect data. Horwitz's FLCAS (1986) was chosen as a common instrument for determining how students feel about their anxiety before, during, and after learning processes, so the questionnaires were adapted from it. The researcher distributed the questionnaire to the twenty-five students and then chose six students with intermediate, middle, and advanced speaking levels to interview in order to gain their perspective on implementing Small Group Discussion technique in their speaking class. The findings of this study show that (1) It was found that the 25 respondents had varying levels of public speaking anxiety. Here, I divide them into three categories: low-level students, middle-level students, and advanced-level students. (2). A number of reasons contributed to the learners' fear of speaking are a lack of vocabulary, a lack of confidence, a lack of grammar; and a lack of external pressure. (3). Lower-level students said that the SGD technique, technique was helpful for them, while middle-level students reported that the SGD technique can help them find an answer together with the group when the lecturer asks them to discover one topic, and advanced-level students allowed them to communicate with others without feeling awkward or anxious. In the future, it would be preferable to use more tools in data collection for the research, such as student diaries, to obtain more explicit explanations from the students. Keywords: small group discussion technique, speaking, speaking anxiet