Foreign language speaking anxiety of Thai EFL students in virtual Classrooms-Pathumwan Institute for Technology students

Abstract

Virtual classrooms for English language instruction became a necessity globally during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, online study cannot be blamed for speaking anxiety of EFL students; foreign language speaking anxiety has long been a detrimental issue that has obstructed Thai EFL learners from speaking English. This study aims to investigate the major concerns that cause undergraduate students at Pathumwan Institute of Technology to experience foreign language speaking anxiety in virtual English classrooms; identify a relationship between Thai cultural obstacles and foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA) that hinders them from speaking English in a virtual environment, and identify pedagogical implications in an effort to ameliorate FLSA of Thai EFL students in virtual classrooms. Opened-ended questions and semi-structured interviews were employed for data collection. The results of the open-ended questions uncovered six concerns among Pathumwan students that led to speaking anxiety: limited vocabulary, fear of wrong pronunciation, inability to process thoughts into words, unpleasant psycho-physiological symptoms, fear of negative evaluation, and fear of miscommunication. The interview results revealed that loss of face, a key Thai cultural issue, was linked to the fear of negative evaluation of Thai EFL students while speaking in public. Thence, it is recommended that mistakes be addressed as acceptable in language learning, and that individual-specific measures be taken according to each learner's English language proficiency level.