What is Speaking in Public like? An Investigation of EFL Learners' Public Speaking Anxiety

Among the four language skills, speaking is the most anxiety-provoking one for the EFL learners; however, in the globalized world, occasions of doing public speaking - the process of giving a speech to a live audience in a structured deliberate manner - are unavoidable. To help EFL learners to overcome emotional impediments, researchers have been searched for causes of public speaking anxiety. Considering the complicated nature of anxiety which leads to difficulties of measuring levels of anxiety and of identifying reasons, metaphor analysis, a cognitive-oriented method in which metaphor is deemed as a way to conceptualize the world and can manifest what people think, is believed useful in accessing tacit knowledge and exploring cognitive, social, and cultural process.

The present study explores EFL learners' public speaking anxiety in a comprehensive manner through three instruments: the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety scale (PRPSA), a metaphor analysis, and a focus-group interview. The target participants are 400 currently enrolled university students in Taiwan, distributing equally according to genders, nationalities, and proficiency levels. Through analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, the present study identifies causes of public speaking anxiety on EFL learners, to compare the causes that result in high-level anxiety and those in low-level anxiety, and to associate the causes with various learners' variables. Also, through focus group interview, pedagogical suggestions on reducing the anxiety and improving public speaking performance are proposed. Findings of the study contribute to foreign language learning research, and may turn speaking anxiety into positive energy to improve communicative competence.

Keywords: EFL. Speaking. Learning anxiety. PRPSA. Metaphor analysis.