Fear of Making Mistakes as a Major of Student's Anxiety in Speaking Section of EFL Classroom

Foreign Language Anxiety means students worry that their errors will get a negative reaction, for instance, a negative reaction from peers or teachers. In Terms of Speaking performance, the students probably believe that their speaking performance is not good enough. For example, her or his pronunciation is mispronounced, their vocabulary mastery is poor, and their speaking skills are not fluent. They think that their errors are a negative thing. Their negative belief affects the students' performance. They are afraid to speak English in the classroom. They don't feel confident to perform their speaking skill. Even though the cognitive approach seems that error is inevitable, it's one of the processes of learning.

FOUR CHANGES TO MITIGATE THE STUDENTS' ANXIETY

Lower speaking anxiety levels is very important to create an environment where all students want to develop their language skills. Kondo (2004) Suggests four strategies to lower their speaking anxiety such as preparation, relaxation, positive thinking and peer seeking. Preparing is a major part of conquering anxiety. By making sure students are prepared before speaking will ease them from their anxious state and make them more relaxed. 

Relaxation is also a huge part of breaking anxiety, students can use relaxation strategies by taking a moment to visualize the words they want to say. Positive thinking is also an essential part of battling anxiety, because if they believe that they can do it, they will most likely perform better. The same goes for peer seeking or encouraging other students to speak more during the classroom.

The first strategy, Preparation. It refers to attempts at controlling the feeling uneasy by improving learning strategies such as giving the students time to answer a question orally, or giving them sufficient time to prepare themselves before speaking in front of the classmates. Applying this strategy is expected to make the students ready and confident during speaking class, and enable reducing their anxiety. 

The second strategy, Relaxation, involves tactics that aim at reducing somatic anxiety symptoms. In order to reduce somatic anxiety symptoms, students need to learn to feel the tension in their muscles and then let it go. When the students become stressed, the breathing becomes short, shallow, and irregular. In contrast when the students are calm the breathing is smooth, deep and regular, also students feel confident and in control while speaking.

The third strategy, Positive Thinking, is attributed by palliative function which emphasized problematic cognitive processes. It underpins the students anxiety, for instance imagine yourself performing a great performance, attempting to relish the suspense. The strategies are proposed to distract the stressful suspense to be positive and enjoyable cues to give support for anxious students.

The fourth strategy, Peer Seeking, is defined by students who actively seek out others to help them and seek out ways to make the processes more comfortable. Also, peer seeking means that students are willing to pay attention and actively seek out others to receive support and advice. So, if someone was going through a similar struggle, they would want to help and ask if they could. If they were willing to talk with someone about their struggles, then they were engaging in peer seeking behavior.

CONCLUSION

Language anxiety is considered as an important affective variable that influences the success of language learning in Foreign Language classroom. (Horwitz, 2001). The language anxiety of students refers to the feeling towards impending threats that they have when they think about the language. In the context of speaking class, the level of anxiety for each student is different depending on the cause of it. Therefore, the major problem of students' anxiety is fear of making mistakes. 

The cause of this problem points to the students' fear of being judged in which most students feel that the classmates judge their speaking skill, the feeling that errors are negative things which means the students worry that their errors will get a negative reaction. Responding to this, the teachers need to realize the cause by providing some changes such as preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, and peer seeking that can be implemented in the classroom in order to reduce the students' anxiety.