PRESENTATION FORMAT AND LEARNER ANXIETY IN THE UNIVERSITY EFL CLASSROOM: INDIVIDUAL, PAIR, AND SELF-SELECTED FORMATS

Zsuzsa Tóth

Abstract


Given their real-world usefulness and anxiety-provoking potential, oral presentations warrant examination from the perspective of learner anxiety in language pedagogy. This study investigates English Studies students’ (N = 105) anxiety levels in response to in-class presentations in a tertiary EFL context in relation to a learner-external variable: presentation format. It examines whether individual, pair, and self-selected formats differ in their impact on anxiety, and whether any format is more favourable in this respect. Data were collected using a post-task self-report measure of state anxiety and analysed using descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicated no statistically significant differences in anxiety levels across the three presentation conditions. However, the proportion of students reporting very high anxiety was lowest in the self-selected format. These findings suggest that while presentation format alone may not substantially reduce anxiety, allowing learners to choose their preferred format may help mitigate its more extreme manifestations.

Keywords


oral presentation, public speaking, public speaking anxiety, foreign language anxiety, tertiary EFL, presentation format

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v11i4.6849

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