THE STUDENTS’ STRATEGY IN REDUCING SPEAKING ANXIETY FOR ELEVENTH GRADE AT SMA NEGERI 12 MEDAN

This study is aimed to know the students’strategy in reducing speaking anxiety and find the reasons why did the students' feel the anxiety in speaking. A total
of 31 eleventh grade students at SMAN 12 Medan were involved in this study. This research used descriptive qualitative research. The researcher used two kinds of techniques 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 there are 22( 71%) students’ out of 31 students who choose to use peer seeking strategies as a strategy that they think
is able to overcome their anxiety. This makes the preparation (54,8%) strategy the most widely used strategy by students, followed by the positive thinking strategy (54,8%), relaxation strategy (45,2%), and the last, resignation strategy (19,4%), 6 students who used the resignation strategy as a strategy to overcome speaking anxiety. This research also showed that the reasons of the students’ anxiety in speaking according to Ernawati & Fatma (2012) there are two factors influence the students’ anxiety that are internal and external factors. According to the questionnarie showed there are 15 (48%) student’s who
choose lack of preparation as the factor of their anxiety in speaking, folowed 13 (41,9%) grammatical error, and the last fear of mistake 12 (38,7%) as the factors that influence students anxiety.