Venita’s Story Trustworthiness

58 entering the ELESP. When this study was being carried, she began her fourth semester. One of Petra’s goals was to learn to speak English well. Therefore, speaking classes offered by the ELESP were the best place for her to speak English actively. Like in the first and second semester, she joined the speaking class in the third semester. In the third semester, the name of the speaking class was Critical Listening and Speaking CLS. One of the requirements to pass the class was that the students had to give a group presentation consisted of three persons. Petra and her friends had to give a presentation with the topic “nature school”. She and her friends prepared themselves before their turn by looking for and arranging the material into a good presentation. Petra personally prepared herself by practicing and remembering her own part. When the day came, Petra and her friends came in front of the classroom. When one of her friend began the presentation, she started to feel anxious. Her heart beat fast and suddenly her stomach ached. She tried to study her own part by looking at the note she had prepared before the presentation but she went blank. When it came to her turn, her heart beat faster than before. She said to herself, “I cannot do this. I am afra id of making mistakes.” However, she remembered her own goals to enhance her speaking skill. She also desired for getting good grade in the class. Then, she took a deep breath. She tried to turn her negative thought into positive one. She said to herself , “Yes, I can. I can. I can do this presentation well. I have memorized all the things last night. I have to try. ” Speaking in the front of the classroom, she went blank. She wanted to be exactly the same like what she had prepared before. However, she forgot the material that she had 59 prepared. She tried to recall her memory yet it was not easy. She kept trying, kept thinking positively and said what she remembered. Speaking in front of the classroom, she consciously made small hand movements but unconsciously played with her hair. Besides, she was unable to pronounce some words correctly. She knew the correct ones but unconsciously mispronounced them. She looked at her lecturer who, according to her, was too serious in listening to her presentation. Because of this, she thought that the lecturer would evaluate her negatively. She was also distracted by some friends who, according to her, liked to give bad comments behind her back. She looked at the other friends then she thought that her topic might be boring so that her friends did not listen to her presentation well. The situation caused her to be more difficult to bring back the material into her mind. Again and again, she convinced herself that she was able to do the presentation well. About her friends, she was confused how to handle the situation but finally she said to herself, “It is okay. No problem. Don’t think about it.” She tried to ignore the thought if maybe some friends would give negative feedback behind her back. The presentation ended. She went back to her chair. From that moment, she made a commitment that she would make better preparation for instance by practicing in front of the mirror, practicing with her friends, studying pronunciation and studying grammar. During the presentation, she indeed felt anxious, but it did not hinder herself to be brave to speak. She thought if she did not brave enough, she would not be able to speak English. Even, she planned to speak in front of the class voluntarily if her lecturers asked her to. 60

B. Interpretation

This section covers the interpretation of participants’ stories derived from in-depth interviews. The completed transcripts as the result of in-depth interviews were read multiple times for the identification of significant themes. The themes were examined for similarities and links therefore attempts were made to order them into coherent themes. Four major themes appeared to best reflect the highly- motivated students ’ lived experience of CA and FNE. The four major themes were: 1 struggle with communication apprehension CA, 2 struggle with fear of negative evaluation FNE, 3 reasons for choosing the coping strategies and 4 impacts of the experience. Within these four themes were a number of subthemes, which describe the substantive areas of the major themes.

1. Struggle with Communication Apprehension CA

Even though both participants had equipped themselves with high motivation, they could not avoid dealing with CA. This section covers a big theme dealing with their experience of CA. The theme had three subthemes which described the substantive areas of how they struggled with CA. The three subthemes were: 1 causes of CA, 2 manifestation of CA and 3 strategies to cope with CA.

a. Causes of CA

Research had indicated a number of ways that learning a foreign language could cause anxiety for language learners. Both participants in my study had the same factors causing their CA. The factors were classroom activities and PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 61 participants’ characteristics. Participants’ characteristics included participants’ personal traits and participants’ beliefs about language learning. 1 Classroom Activities Venita experienced CA when she had to deliver five-minute impromptu speech in the speaking class. The lecturer employed a classroom activity called “hot seat”. At that time, she randomly picked a topic prepared by the lecturer and got a topic “three unique ways of using a pencil except for writing and drawing.” Then, she thought about the topic in 15 seconds and talked about it for about 5 minutes in front of her lecturer and friends. She told me that this kind of classroom activity made her so anxious because everything was so random meaning that she did not know everything about the speech including the topic and the presentation schedule, so she could not make any preparations before the speech. Venita expressed In other presentation, I did not feel so anxious because I could make preparations. Nah, when it came to “hot seat”, I could not make any preparations. I did not know the topic. I did not know what I would say. I did not know when my turn would be. Intrvw1_V96 Young 1999 state that using speaking activities that put the learner “on the spot” in front of their classmates without allowing adequate preparation is one of sources of anxiety for many students. Generally, through preparation, students need time to construct their ideas and make correct language choices. Wong- Filmore 1985 argues that more preparation and practice time are similar to the message redundancy meaning that repeating main presentation contents gives students more opportunities to improve and master their presenting skills. In