Reasons for Students’ Reluctance to Participate in In-Class Speaking Activities

Abstract

Speaking is one of the most important skills in English language learning. Practicing speaking regularly is important to develop students’ speaking skills (both fluency and accuracy). When students speak in the English language in the classroom, they face a lot of problems. This descriptive qualitative study aimed to explore the reasons for students’ reluctance to participate in in-class speaking activities. This study was conducted at the English Language Education Program, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (ELEP-UKSW), Salatiga. A lot of English language education students experienced problems during in-class speaking activities in Speaking for Social Purposes class. As many as 44 participants of this study were selected using nonprobability sampling. An open-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were used to collect the data. The findings showed that the participants encountered both linguistic problems and non-linguistic problems which were resulted from external factors (outside the individual) and internal factors (inside the individual). This study was useful for both the students and the lecturers as a reference to make them more aware of the current concerns. Also, this study suggests that level of support among teacher-student and student-student seems important and needs to be given more attention both by the students and the lecturers.