AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ STRATEGIES TO COPE WITH SPEAKING ANXIETY AT ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMAN 15 MEDAN

This study is aimed to know the level of students’ speaking anxiety
and investigate students' strategies to cope with speaking anxiety in an
EFL classroom. A total of 25 eleventh grade students of XI IPA 7 at
SMAN 15 Medan were involved in this study. This research used a
descriptive qualitative design. The researcher used two kinds of
technique to collect the data, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety
Scale questionnaire developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) and
interviews. The result of this research showed that most of the
students are at moderate level, as many as 19 (76%) of the 25
students, this shows that more than half of the students are at a
moderate level, 4 (16%) students are at high anxiety level and only 2
(8%) students are at low level anxiety. This research also showed that
there are 19 students (76%) out of 25 students who choose to use
positive thinking strategies as a strategy that they think is able to
overcome their anxiety. This makes the positive thinking strategy the
most widely used strategy by students, followed by the preparation
strategy (64%), relaxation strategy (56%), and peer-seeking strategy
(8%). In this study, there were no students who used the resignation
strategy as a strategy to overcome speaking anxiety.