Fear of Public Speaking in Students

Abstract

This paper addresses the research into students’ attitudes to speaking in public on different themes and students observations of experienced gains and lacks. Each student stumble upon a variety of complexities in making presentations and these difficulties need to be identified and dealt with. Evaluation of public speaking allows determining strengths and weaknesses and work out the methodology of teaching effective presentations. The outcome of research is drawing general outline of good practices in helping students to overcome this problem.

1.0 Introduction

Speaking in public always aims at communication and presupposes a different level of formality depending on the settings and the audience. Learning to speak in a foreign language differs from learning other subjects due to its social nature. Language is part of person’s identity, and speaking is used to convey this identity to other people. Since oral production is open to audience scrutiny, lack of confidence and fear of looking foolish cause speaker’s anxiety. People are also concerned about such things as grammar, lexis and pronunciation.

There is a wealth of publications on the issues of making presentations and how to prepare a presentable talk and deliver it. However, teaching and learning to make well-organized presentations in front of an audience takes a lot of practice - students need some systematic training in preparing and performing. The principal