Investigating English Language Education Students’ Public Speaking Self-efficacy: A Survey Study

Abstract

As a foreign language, when learning English especially public speaking is challenging. The ability to speak in public using the English language must be studied and practiced as much as possible, especially for English language education students who will later need English public speaking skills in their workplace. In maximizing public speaking skills, students must have self-efficacy to evaluate and improve their performance in subsequent appearances. Therefore, this study investigating English langauge education students’ public speaking self-efficacy was conducted. To collect the data, there were 127 respondents joining this survey study that using two instruments by Zhang et al., (2019), English Public Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale (ESES) and Sources of English Public Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale (SSES). Twenty-six questions from the questionnaires were divided into 8 aspects (i.e., language competence, delivery competence, topic competence, organization competence, enactive mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological and affective states). The data were analyzed by using the Statistical Program for Social Science (SPSS). The findings of (ESES) showed that the students were highly efficacious in terms of Organization Competence (OC) with a score (M=3.26), students were capable of doing their speech when they make the organization of conceptualization of their topic such as listing the material, searching evidence of the material, and making main idea. Then, for (SSES) students were also highly efficacious in terms of Physiological and affective states (PAS) with a score (M=4.54), they feel unstable before doing their speech, which can be caused by bad past experiences, so they feel pressured in front of the public and that makes them nervous, stressed, and anxious. Further implications and suggestions were also proposed in this study. In this study also aims to improving the awareness of the students which fills out a questionnaire, so they are capable to increase their knowledge if they have evaluated their ability on the past experiences.