Journal Screenshot

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2222-6990

Fear of Oral Presentation: Trait or State Anxiety?

Norhafizah Amir, Noor Hanim Rahmat, Mok Soon Sim, Ira Syaqira Sukimin, Siti Fatimah Mohamad Radzi, Fatimah Azzahra Md Raus

http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v12-i5/13191

Open access

Communication helps people understand one another and helps to remove misunderstandings. Communication bridges the gap between people to transfer information. Communication can be formal or informal. An oral presentation is one form of communication that people do to get their message across. Some are natural-born speakers, while others need help to become better at communication. There are many reasons why people fear public speaking. Some presenters have low self-esteem and feel that their lack of grammar skills will get in the way. Some are apprehensive about presenting in front of an audience because they feel adequate in terms of knowledge. They are afraid that their message will not get conveyed or they will get misunderstood. While these types of fear can be true, some manage to overcome the fear, while some remain apprehensive. This quantitative research is done to investigate the prevalence of oral presentation among learners of English as a second language. The instrument used is a survey. 56 respondents were purposively chosen to answer the survey. The survey has three main sections. Section A has items on the demographic profile. Section B has eight items on External factors and Section C includes seven items on internal factors. Findings in this study show that presenters feared oral presentations from internal and external factors. Generally, speakers’ feeling of inadequacy has added to their fear of oral presentation. Findings have interesting pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of oral presentations.

Endler, N. S. (1980). Person-situation interaction and anxiety. In I. L. Kutash (Ed.), Handbook on stress and anxiety. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass, pp.249-266.
Gieve, R. (2021). Student Fears of Oral presentations and Public Speaking in Higher Education: A Qualitative Survey. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(9), pp 1281-1293. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2021.1948509
Gufriyansyah, R., and Khairani, M. (2019). An Experiment of Public Speaking Anxiety on College Students. Proceeding of the 1st International Conference on Psychology (ICPsy 2019), pp 5-11. https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2019/94339/94339.pdf
Marinho, A. C. F., De Medeiros, A. M., Lima, E. P., Pantuza, J. J., and Teixeira, L. C. (2019) Prevalance and Factors associated with fear of public speaking. National Library of Medicine, 31(6). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31644711/
McCroskey, J. C. (1977). Oral communication apprehension: A summary of recent theory and research. Human Communication Research, 4, 78–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1977.tb00599.x
Nikitina, A. (2011). Successful Public Speaking. Arina Nikitina & bookboon.com. https://www.isbtweb.org/fileadmin/user_upload/successful-public-speaking.pdf
Rahmat, N. H., Shahabani, N. S., & Ibrahim, I. W. (2020). Function of Speaking in English Language & Speaking Anxiety. European Journal of English language, 6(1), pp 87-103. https://oapub.org/edu/index.php/ejel/article/view/3360
Rahmat, N. H. (2019). Cycle of Fear in Learning: The Case for Three Language Skills.
American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(1), 151–162. https://doi.org/10.20448/801.41.151.162
Raja, F. (2017) Anxiety Levels in Students of Public Speaking. Journal of Education and Educational Development, 4(1), pp 94-110.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1161521.pdf
Soomro, M. A., Siming, I. A., Shah, S. H. R., Rajper, M., Naz, S., & Channa, M. A. (2019). An Investigation of Anxiety Factors during English Oral Presentation Skills of Engineering Undergraduates in Pakistan. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9 (3), pp 203-210. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n3p203
Spielberger, C. D. (1966) Anxiety and behavior: New York: Academic Press

In-Text Citation: (Amir et al., 2022)
To Cite this Article: Amir, N., Rahmat, N. H., Sim, M. S., Sukimin, I. S., Radzi, S. F. M., & Raus, F. A. M. (2022). Fear of Oral Presentation: Trait or State Anxiety? International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(5), 833 – 845.