Study a language meaning mastering the language cannot be achieved overnight. It takes minutes, hours, days, months, years, and even along human life. Besides that, it also needs the all human potencies, certainly by regarding all the interrelated factors. However, the learners must be aware that beside the potential elements the human beings possess, there are still many unpredictable determinants influencing the learners’ success.
Anxiety is one of the factors which may influence the students in accelerating the speaking mastery. In addition, it absolutely cannot be eliminated from the learners or ‘expert speakers’ although the persons are very experienced. It is impossible to omit it so there just must be a process of adaption; then, the anxiety can be subtracted shapely. From the above assumption, the writer is able to sum up that the higher anxiety level the learners have, the more difficult the process of English speaking mastery will be. Conversely, the less anxiety level the learners have, the easier the process of English speaking mastery will be. In short, it sometimes that the anxiety level will increase or decrease; it is just dependent on the learners themselves. The anxiety appears within the learner-selves because of a few reasons as follows:
1. The learners are not ready to join the subject as they do not make any preparations at home before the learning process of speaking goes on;
2. The learners are fear to join the subject though they have studied hard. They, actually have any ideas to say but they get difficulties to say because they are afraid of making mistakes;
3. The learners want to say many things but they are shy to say. Their shyness may be caused by their personal traits, they belong to shy person or introvert, so it is difficult to say although only a word, and
4. The learners are reluctant to say because of their fatigue. They are not mood to say or something else; they are drowsy or perhaps just tired.
From the four factors written above, actually the writer is more interested in the first one because it is very close to the classroom activities; by which the teaching learning process or the testing goes on. However, it does not mean that the other factors are not influential. In this case, the teachers’ and students’ role in eliciting anxiety can be observed, whether their role is significant or not. If the teachers’ role is not significant how to contribute them by offering solutions, and if the students’ role is insignificant, how to reinforce them by giving motivation, suggestion, solution and perhaps reward for the excellent students.
Before probing about anxiety, let the writer affirm that anxiety is a matter of psychological state. It is an abstract object, so the study of anxiety is equivalent with the study of psychological matter as psycholinguistics. It belongs to the subject that is not open into immediate observation. It cannot be figured out by numbers or numerals for it is not a concrete thing. It does not appear apparently through computation of formulas. We can only see the indicators of anxious persons through physiological response from the persons concerned. Tobias (1971) says this response has many accompanying physiological components such as rapid heart rate, pulse beat, perspiration, and the like. It is generally regarded by the anxious individual as unpleasant. Woolfolk (1984) explains a person who has a general tendency to become anxious is more likely to respond to many types of situations with sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat. Probably the following indicators can be used to show that the person is anxious such as he/she looks nervous or pale and particularly in speaking he/she cannot speak fluently and skips it by many interruptions- a…., what does it means a ….. – and the other else; though it must not absolutely be.
However, lecturers must comprehend the indicators of the anxious learners so they can help the learners to reduce and overcome the coming problems. As lectures, instead of giving up, they need to examine whether their students are anxious or not. If they find out their students anxious, they should immediately entrust them to calm down and face any topics of speaking relax. These suggestions may be simple but it is very helpful to reduce the students’ anxiety.
Anxiety is an inter- language. It is inevitable because it is inseparable with the process of mastering the novel languages. It is not the only obstruction the learners will face but is just one of the facets. And, it is implied to all humans without leveling of who they are, where they are from, what language they are studying, and what the chief goals they want to get. From the explanations above the writer needs to draw some conclusions as follows:
1. Anxiety has a significant influence and role in accelerating speaking mastery.
2. Anxiety is one of the inner factors which can be coped with by real efforts and actions of the learners.
3. The level of anxiety is different among the learners.
4. Lecturers should help the highly anxious to reduce their problems by giving motivations and stimuli.
written by : Mr. Ruwandi, MA
uploaded by: Marisa Fran Lina, S.PdI and Ratna Sari, S.PdI
(F&T)