The Relationship between Students’ Speaking Anxiety and

Speaking Skills

Iqbal Fadly, Alek, Zaharil Anasy, Didin Nuruddin Hidayat, Dhuha Hadiansyah,

Teguh Khaerudin and Kustiwan

Department of English Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN),

Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, Jl. Ir. H. Juanda No. 95 Jakarta, Indonesia

Keywords: English, Learning Motivation, Speaking Skill.

Abstract: This study aims to determine whether or not there is a correlation between students' learning motivation and

their speaking skills in Class X MAN 13 Jakarta. This research was conducted by collecting data on students'

learning motivation and their English speaking skills. The research sample consisted of 25 students who were

randomly selected from nine classes of first year students at an Islamic-based high school in Jakarta. The

researchers distributed a learning motivation questionnaire to all samples then gave them an English speaking

or spoken test by telling their own experiences in English. In addition, the results of this study were analyzed

using the help of the SPSS 2.2 for Windows program, and showed that rxy > rtable i.e. 0.952 > 0.396. In other

words, the alternative hypothesis of this research is accepted while the null hypothesis is rejected. Finally, the

study found a correlation between students' learning motivation and their speaking skills in English. This can

be seen from the data where students who have a higher level of motivation also get a better score in speaking

English than those who have a low level of learning motivation. The data above implies that 0.952 as Pearson's

Product Moment score indicates that there is a strong correlation between students’ learning motivation and

their English speaking skill.

1 INTRODUCTION

Speaking is one of the most important activities of

human life. Through speaking people can share ideas,

opinions, and information with others. Speaking can

be seen as a communication tool because people need

it in every aspect of life such as business,

entertainment, education and economy. Thus, this

skill is important to be possessed by many people

including a student. Correspondingly, speaking is

generally considered to be the most demanding skill

for students than other skills in English. As Richard,

asserted that students generally evaluate their ability

in English as well as they get improvement in their

speaking skills. This shows that the current students

thought speaking English as a barometer of English

mastery (Andriani et al., 2018).

Additionally, speaking is one of the objectives of

learning English in Indonesia as mentioned in the

2013 curriculum. In this curriculum it is explained

that speaking is very important for students and

students need to master English speaking skills in

certain aspects based on student grades. This is

because English is taught as a compulsory subject

from junior high school to higher levels. What is

more, high school students are also taught to master

speaking as one of the targets of English language

skills and it is also regulated by the Government of

Indonesia in the 2013 curriculum. At this school

level, first year students to share their personal

experiences in the past to others in the form of written

and spoken language. It means high school students

to retell their personal experiences using English to

others.

But in reality, students’ speaking ability is still far

from expectations. This can be seen from the

students’ speaking achievement which is still below

the minimum criterion score of 75. In addition, most

of the students find various obstacles in practicing

speaking English. The same thing also happened to

the previous research conducted by Deni, which

found that students find it difficult to speak in English

due to lack of vocabulary stock, confidence, and

motivation to speak in English (Abrar et al., 2018). In

addition, all these factors contribute to the students’

Fadly, I., Alek, ., Anasy, Z., Hidayat, D., Hadiansyah, D., Khaerudin, T. and Kustiwan, .

The Relationship between Students’ Speaking Anxiety and Speaking Skills.

DOI: 10.5220/0011241300003376

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2021), pages 45-50

ISBN: 978-989-758-602-6

results in speaking English. This is because

vocabulary, confidence, and motivation are needed

for someone who wants to speak English fluently. As

Utami asserts that self-confidence and motivation are

im portant aspects before someone learns a target skill

(Brown, 2001). Without these factors, students will

not know what to say in English, as happened to the

second graders of MAN 13 Jakarta. Most of the

students have a lack of vocabulary and they do not

know how to express their ideas in English even most

of the students prefer to be silent rather than speak in

English.

Furthermore, students lack confidence to speak

English because they do not often practice it inside

and outside the classroom. Then, most of the students

prefer to use their first language (Indonesian) instead

of trying to use English as the target language. Most

of the students are worried about the wrong

pronunciation, and missing words so they choose not

to say anything in English. The last factor is self-

motivation which is one of the important factors in

teaching and learning process. Actually, all of

students have different motivation in learning English

speaking. Some of them are highly motivated

students and the rest are not. The highly motivated

students will give their best in learning speaking, and

they will push themselves to speak out by using

English. Then, they will find out the way to overcome

their problems in speaking English. However, the low

motivated students will have less interest in speaking

and tend to have difficulty in speaking English.

In real situations, most of the first graders of MAN

13 Jakarta have low interest and motivation to speak

in English and this can be caused by many aspects

such as the teacher’s teaching methods, learning

environment and equipment for the teaching and

learning process. First, the teacher’s teaching method

means the way the teacher conveys the topic.

Teachers’ teaching methods are generally

monotonous so that they do not stimulate students’

interest in these subjects. As a result, students become

bored and lazy to participate in activities in class.

Second, a learning environment that does not

encourage students to dare to speak. Most students

have limited time to practice in class, and they do not

have a partner to practice outside of class. Thus,

making students have low motivation to learn to

speak English. Third, the limited equipment used so

that students are not interested in participating in

English speaking activities.

Based on the explanation above, it can be

interpreted that motivation is an important part in

learning to speak English. This is because students’

motivation can encourage them to learn to speak

English optimally. Therefore, it is suspected that

students who have high motivation in learning to

speak will have better achievements than students

with low motivation. However, previous research

conducted by Istani confirmed that not all students

with low motivation in learning to speak have low

speaking skills and there is no guarantee that highly

motivated students always have good speaking skills

(Clough and Duff, 2020). Therefore, this study aims

to determine the relationship between students’ self-

motivation in learning and the speaking skills of Class

I students at MAN 13 Jakarta in the 2020/2021

academic year. This study is anticipated to have

significant implications not just from the theoretical

point of view, but also technically. The research

question driving this investigation is “Was there any

correlation between students’ learning motivation

and their speaking skill?” and “What category of

correlation does learning motivation give to students’

speaking skill?”.

2 METHOD

The study applied quantitative method with

correlational research design to know whether or not

there was a correlation between students’ learning

motivation and their speaking ability. The study used

the correlation statistical test to describe and measure

between those two variables (Brown, 2006). It

indicated that the researchers used the correlation

statistical test to know the correlation between

students’ learning motivation and their speaking

ability.

This research was conducted to second grade of

MAN 13 Jakarta which is located on Lenteng Agung,

Jakarta Selatan. The researchers conducted this study

on September to October 2020. It means that the

researchers conducted all of the research process

through online classes by using online platform. It is

due students should learn at home during the

Pandemic Covid-19.

Questionnaire and speaking test were used to

collect the data from 25 students as the sample of this

study. The researchers distributed the motivation

questionnaire to all students by using an online

platform then the researchers conducted the online

class to give them speaking test about their personal

experiences. Moreover, during all the processes the

researchers still observed how the way the students

receive and accept the information and material

during the learning process.

The data of this research was analyzed differently.

Students’ motivation score was analyzed by

ICRI 2021 - International Conference on Recent Innovations

calculating the mean score of intrinsic and extrinsic

motivation then the researchers should interpret

students’ level of motivation after that they need to

converting the motivation score into the same format

of students speaking score. Students speaking score

was gaining by scoring them using s rubric consist of

grammar, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and

pronunciation proposed by (Creswell, 2012). Finally,

the researchers analysed the data from the two

variables to see whether or not there is a correlation

between students’ learning motivation and their

speaking skill. To analyse the two variable, the

researchers used the formula of correlation product

moment, and the data were analysed using SPSS. 2 2

Program for windows.

3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The researchers analyzed the students’ motivation

scores by converting the results of the questionnaire

into a conversion score of speaking English by

dividing the total score in the questionnaire by 1.5. In

this data, there are 25 students who have been given

a learning motivation questionnaire with 30 multiple

choice questions. The data on student motivation is

described in the histogram form below:

Figure 1: The histogram of students’ learning motivation.

From Figure 1. above, it can be interpreted that

students who often get scores range from 60 to 80 and

most students score 80 as the most frequently

obtained scores by students. While students who

scored below 60 to 50 were fewer. The picture above

depicts visually how students’ motivation to learn

when learning English in the classroom and how

parents, teachers, and the environment support them

in the learning process. Finally, this data also

represents the students’ own desires, attitudes, and

efforts in learning English as their intrinsic

motivation.

Meanwhile, students’ speaking scores are also

described in the following histogram. From these

data, it can be interpreted that students who often get

scores range from 70 to 80 and most students score

80 as the most frequently obtained scores by students.

While students who scored below 50 to 40 fewer. The

picture above depicts visually how the students’

speaking skills in English are when they talk about

their past experiences. This can be seen from the way

they pronounce words, fluency, understanding,

grammar, vocabulary, and also assignments. For

more details, the researchers display the data in the

histogram below:

Figure 2: The histogram of students’ English speaking

score.

After collecting data on students’ learning

motivation and speaking skills, the researchers then

tested the hypothesis to determine whether there was

a relationship between students’ learning motivation

and speaking skills by comparing the r table and the

value of the r coefficient. In addition, Table 1 below

describes the results of hypothesis testing.

Table 1: The Correlation Result.

Correlations

Speaking

Skill

Motivation

Speaking

Skill

Pearson

Correlation

1 .952**

Sig. (2-

tailed

)

.000

N 25 25

Motivation Pearson

Correlation

.952** 1

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000

N 25 25

**. Correlation is si

nificant at the 0.01 level

(

2-tailed

)

The Relationship between Students’ Speaking Anxiety and Speaking Skills

Based on the data above, it is known that the

coefficient of r is 0.952 and sig (2-tailed) is 0.000.

After calculating the data, it can be interpreted that

there is a very strong relationship between students’

learning motivation and students’ speaking skills.

This means that students who have high motivation

will also get high achievement in speaking skills.

While r product moment with a significant value of

5% is 0.396.

Moreover, it is clearly implied that rxy>rtable or

0.952>0.396. This means that Ha is accepted and Ho

is rejected or there is a significant relationship

between students' learning motivation and students'

speaking skills. In other words, students with high

motivation score high in their speaking skills.

Meanwhile, students with low learning motivation

got low scores in their speaking skills.

Finally, the current research found that students'

learning motivation is very important for students'

learning outcomes in speaking English because it has

a strong correlation between students' motivation in

learning and their English speaking skills. Therefore,

it is important to build students' motivation so that

they can achieve maximum achievement in their

speaking skills.

The main objective of this research was to find out

whether or not there was a correlation between

students’ learning motivation and their speaking skill

in English. This research implied that students need

speaking skill for their academic and social life

(Nefri, 2013). It is due to speaking is become one of

the goal of learning English for senior high school

students in Indonesia as it is regulated on 2013

curriculum. However, most of the students still faced

some challenges in practicing English speaking skill

(Legault, 2016). EFL teachers and students still faced

difficulty in speaking an English language.

The challenges faced by the students are also

found at MAN 13 Jakarta, most of the students seem

have no idea what to talk in English. It is due to they

have limited vocabulary stock, self-confidence, and

self-motivation. The same point is also emphasized

by Deni, who stated that most common obstacles

faced by students are lack of vocabulary, and less of

learning intention, and motivation to speak in English

(Abrar et al., 2018). In other words, students have less

motivation to speak in English so that they rarely use

English to speak. Liu, Hau, & Zheng is also asserted

that motivation could help students to pass the

learning process in maximum way since students

enjoy all of the process of learning (Legault, 2016).

Motivation becomes one of the essential factors in

teaching and learning process including learning how

to speak an English language. Motivation is a

conscious effort to move, direct and maintain

someone's behavior so that he is compelled to act to

do something to achieve results or a specific purpose

(Locke and Schattke, 2018). In other words,

motivation is a kind of stimulus that could make

someone do everything in maximum way.

There are two kinds of motivation such as intrinsic

motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic

motivation refers to motivation concerned in

activities from its own sake (Liu, 2020). It means that

a motivation which comes from student itself refers

to their own desire. Meanwhile extrinsic motivation

is an aspect that comes from our surrounding which

able to motivate us to do our best in every single

activity we do in this case learning speaking. It is

supported by Locke, & Schattke who asserted that

motivation appears due to external incentive such as

reward, gift, and punishment. In other words,

motivation could be appeared through other support

and stimulus (Lin and Chen, 2017).

Asides from those all explanations, the result of

this study provided the information that 64% of the

students have higher level of motivation in which

they got 70 score of motivation. Meanwhile 36% of

the students still have low motivation level since they

got below of 70 as their score of motivation. In line

with motivation score, students speaking skill in

which most of students got 80 as their speaking score.

However, student with low motivation score got low

score in speaking it is proved by students speaking

score that is below than 70.

The result above strongly indicates that there were

a strong correlation between students’ learning

motivation and their speaking skill at MAN 13

Jakarta. It seems to indicate that students with higher

level of motivation will get higher score on their

English speaking score. On contrary, students who

get lower level of motivation will get lower score on

their speaking score. It is pointed by Isianti who have

also done a research about students’ motivation and

speaking ability and the result of the study revealed

that there were a positive correlation between

students’ learning motivation and their speaking skill

(Putra, 2017).

In light with this current research, a research

dealing with learning motivation and speaking was

conducted by Rahman & Deviyanti to 34 students of

SMAN 2 Bandar Lampung (Rahman and Deviyanti,

2018). The findings of the study revealed that

students’ learning motivation have a great correlation

with students’ speaking skill. Another important

research related to the correlational study of

motivation and speaking skill was conducted by Putra

(Rheinberg and Engeser, 2018). This study was

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conducted to the Eight grade students of SMPN 17

Tangerang. This correlational study revealed that

students with high motivation level success on their

speaking since they pass the minimum mastery

criterion score. Further, Putra emphasized that

teacher needs to improve teaching methodology so

that students could be motivate to learn speaking

English frequently.

Different from the previous study, this

correlational study was conducted during the

pandemic Covid-19. It means that all of the research

process should be done through online platform since

the students are suggested to learn at home during the

pandemic. Thus, the researchers found some

challenges while conducting this research for instance

research process really depend on the internet

connection between the researchers and the sample.

Then, it quite difficult for the researchers to conduct

the test and collect the speaking data since some

students have no internet connection and they

difficult to follow the research. This challenge may

not be found on the previous research conducted by

previous researchers since they have conducted the

research directly between the researchers and the

sample since it was done before the Pandemic Covid-

19 exist in Indonesia. Finally, this current research

might be able to give further researcher an image

about how to conduct a correlational research during

the Pandemic Covid-19 so that further researchers

could anticipate all of the unexpected condition

during the research process.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the results that have been described, it can

be concluded that the alternative hypothesis of this

study is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected

because the Pearson Correlation point or rxy is

greater than rtable (0.952 > 0.396) with a significant

level of 5%. This shows that there is a relationship

between students' learning motivation and their

English speaking skills. After analyzing the two

variables using the Pearson Product Moment formula,

it was found that rxy = 0.952. Based on the results of

rxy = 0.952, it shows that the correlation gravity in

this study is at a higher level. It is considered that

there is a strong relationship between students'

motivation in learning to speak and students' speaking

ability. In addition, by looking at the calculation

above, there is a positive correlation between variable

X and variable Y. It means that students with higher

motivation will get better speaking skills than those

with lower motivation. In other words, the more

motivated the students are, the better speaking skills

can be achieved.

Furthermore, by examining the r table at Df = 25

and comparing it with rxy, it is found that at the 5%

significance level ro: rt = 0952 > 0.396. This means

that the significance of 5% (rxy) is greater than rt. In

other words, at the 5% significance level, the null

hypothesis (Ho) is rejected and the alternative

hypothesis (Ha) which states there is a relationship

between students' learning motivation and speaking

skills is accepted. To sum up, there is a positive

relationship between students' learning motivation

and their speaking skills in class I MAN 13 Jakarta.

Finally, it is important to note that the level of

correlation in this study implies that the correlation is

strong, and it is understandable that students with

high levels of motivation will get better performance

on their speaking skills than those with low levels of

motivation.

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