Student Anxiety and Motivation of Speaking English in Conversation Class: A Case Study

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

To build confidence to engage in conversation it is crucial to motivate and reduce anxiety in EFL learners. This case study will focus on analyzing students’ per-ceived anxiety, its effect on their motivation to speak English, and suggest strate-gies to decrease anxiety while increasing motivation. Research data consisted of a Google form survey, self-reflection questionnaire, and one-on-one interviews. Surveys were given as a Google form on the students’ phones, consisting of 46 students taking a mandatory weekly English Conversation course in the second semester of 2019 at a South Korean university. To identify the impact on the stu-dents’ conversational anxiety and motivation, the qualitative study method was utilized. In the pre/post questionnaire some significant changes were found in both anxiety and motivation. The questions were designed to be self-reflective leading to more honest answers. The findings show focused activities requiring longer re-sponses lowered students’ anxiety and increased motivation to speak. Lack of mo-tivation changed little from beginning to end, from the questionnaire data, sug-gesting students’ prior experience provided the framework. Exposure to criticism from peers, who are not in the common friend circle, challenges the short-term fear barrier and is not related to English per se.