Student Anxiety and Motivation of Speaking English in Conversation Class: A Case Study

To build confidence to engage in conversation it is crucial to motivate and reduce anxiety in EFL learners. This case study will focus on analyzing students’ per-ceived anxiety, its effect on their motivation to speak English, and suggest strate-gies to decrease anxiety while increasing motivation. Research data consisted of a Google form survey, self-reflection questionnaire, and one-on-one interviews. Surveys were given as a Google form on the students’ phones, consisting of 46 students taking a mandatory weekly English Conversation course in the second semester of 2019 at a South Korean university. To identify the impact on the stu-dents’ conversational anxiety and motivation, the qualitative study method was utilized. In the pre/post questionnaire some significant changes were found in both anxiety and motivation. The questions were designed to be self-reflective leading to more honest answers. The findings show focused activities requiring longer re-sponses lowered students’ anxiety and increased motivation to speak. Lack of mo-tivation changed little from beginning to end, from the questionnaire data, sug-gesting students’ prior experience provided the framework. Exposure to criticism from peers, who are not in the common friend circle, challenges the short-term fear barrier and is not related to English per se.