Despite the satisfactory results and findings of this action research, the present study has three limitations. First, the time scale of the present study appeared to be too intensive for both students and teachers. The English speaking/presentation course was implemented for eighteen weeks over the course of one semester. With so many focuses (fluency and presentation phases, eight speaking skills, and seven speaking activities), it was not possible to teach all these skills and activities thoroughly even using two cycles of spiral teaching. Although it was apparent that most students’
speaking/presentation skills improved after intervention, there was not sufficient time for students to practice and become proficient in each speaking skill. According to students’ journals, they also felt the schedule was so tense that they were unable to fully digest what the teacher had taught because they had to prepare speeches or presentations every two weeks. A future study could investigate the extension of the English speaking/presentation course for a whole year over two semesters. Furthermore, it would also be useful to examine using more diverse speaking activities to increase the long-term effects of the speaking/presentation course.
Second, future studies could investigate ways to reduce students’ speaking anxiety.
The current study used Cheng’s (2017) L2 Speaking Anxiety Scale to assess students’
level of speaking anxiety. According to the statistical analyses, after the teaching intervention, the students’ speaking anxiety in the cognitive and behavioral dimensions decreased significantly. However, their anxiety in the somatic dimension increased significantly. The intensive English speaking/presentation course succeeded in helping
speaking task and the task’s challenging nature, the students’ physical anxiety increased.
Therefore, further research should find more ways to help students relax and reduce their physical responses of anxiety while speaking English.
Last, future studies could use the English speaking/presentation course on students at other grade levels to see if the results are replicable. The 10th grade participants in the present study found the English speaking/presentation course effective. However, this does not mean that the English speaking/presentation course would be applicable to other graders. To gain a more comprehensive understanding and evaluate the effect of the program, future researchers could adopt it with students of different academic levels.
Despite these limitations, this study is a clear step toward helping teachers incorporate speaking/presentation skills training into regular senior high school English classrooms and thus decrease students’ speaking anxiety. Using a spiral and systematic English speaking/presentation course has been shown to be effective at the school level, and further investigation, research, adjustment, and refinement can also help at the academic level. Hopefully, the present study can inspire many senior high school teachers to incorporate speaking/presentation skills into their classrooms as well as provide a positive environment for students to speak English more confidently.
REFERENCES
Aida, Y. (1994). Examination of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope's construct of foreign language anxiety: The case of students of Japanese. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 155-168.
Al-Issa, A. S., & Al-Qubtan, R. E. D. H. A. (2010). Taking the floor: Oral presentations in EFL classrooms. TESOL Journal, 1(2), 227-246.
Bailey, K. M. (1983). Competitiveness and anxiety in adult second language learning:
Looking at and through the diary studies. Classroom Oriented Research in Second Language Acquisition, 3(5), 67-102.
Bailey, K. M., Curtis, A., Nunan, D., & Fan, D. (2001). Pursuing professional
development: The self as source (Vol. 63, No. 59, p. 4). Boston, MA: Heinle &
Heinle.
Boonkit, K. (2010). Enhancing the development of speaking skills for non-native.
speakers of English. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 1305-1309.
Burns, A. (2009). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners. Routledge.
Carrero Pérez, N. P. (2016). Effects of tasks on spoken interaction and motivation in English language learners. GIST Education and Learning Research Journal, 13, 34-55.
Chang, K. C. (2014). A study on the sources and coping strategies of anxiety about English academic oral presentations among Taiwanese EFL graduate students (Master’s thesis), National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Retrieved August 2, 2018, from http:// ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/
Chambers, F. (1997). What do we mean by fluency? System, 25(4), 535-544.
Chaqmaqchee, Z. A. (2015). Empowering learning: Students and teachers’ outlook on peer assessment for oral presentation. Journal of Education and Practice, 6, 75-81.
Cheng, Y. S. (2017). Development and preliminary validation of four brief measures of L2 language-skill-specific anxiety. System, 68, 15-25.
Chou, M. H. (2011). The influence of learner strategies on oral presentations: A comparison between group and individual performance. English for Specific Purposes, 30, 272-285.
Christianson, M., & Payne, S. (2011). Helping students develop skills for better presentations: Using the 20x20 format for presentation training. Language Research Bulletin, 26, 1-15.
Coskun, A. (2017). The effect of Pecha Kucha presentations on students’ English public speaking anxiety. Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development, 19, 11-22.
Dale, P., & Wolf, J. C. (2006). Speech communication made simple. Pearson/Longman.
Doğan, Y., & Tuncer, M. (2016). Examination of foreign language classroom anxiety and achievement in foreign language in Turkish university students in terms of various variables. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 4(5), 18-29.
Gan, Z. (2013). Understanding English speaking difficulties: An investigation of two Chinese populations. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34, 231-248.
Gardner, R. C., & MacIntyre, P. D. (1993). On the measurement of affective variables in second language learning. Language learning, 43(2), 157-194.
Goh, C. C. M. (2007). Teaching speaking in the language classroom. Singapore:
SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
He, D. (2017). How to cope with foreign language speaking anxiety effectively? The case of university students in China. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 14.
Hine, G., & Lavery, S. D. (2014). Action research: Informing professional practice within schools. Issues in Educational Research, 24(2).
Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety.
The Modern Language Journal, 70, 125-132.
Horwitz, E. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 112-126.
Horwitz, E. K. (2017). On the misreading of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) and the need to balance anxiety research and the experiences of anxious language learners. New insights into language anxiety: Theory, research and educational implications (pp. 31-50). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Johnson, M. L. (2012). Engaging students through pecha-kucha presentations.
Techniques: Connecting Education & Careers, 87(6), 21-24.
Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (2005). Participatory action research: Communicative action and the public sphere. Beverly Hills, CA: 3rd edition.
Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Springer Science & Business Media.
Levin, M. A., & Peterson, L. T. (2013). Use of Pecha Kucha in marketing students' presentations. Marketing Education Review, 23(1), 59-64.
Liao, H. A. (2014). Examining the role of collaborative learning in a public speaking course. College Teaching, 62(2), 47-54.
Lin, L. C. (2014). Learning Word Meanings from Teachers' Repeated Story Read-Aloud in EFL Primary Classrooms. English Language Teaching, 7(7), 68-81.
Liu, M., & Jackson, J. (2008). An exploration of Chinese EFL learners' unwillingness to communicate and foreign language anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 92, 71-86.
Lucas, K., & Rawlins, J. D. (2015). Pecha Kucha presentations: Teaching storytelling, visual design, and conciseness. Communication Teacher, 29, 102-107.
Mabuan, R. A. (2017). Developing ESL/EFL learners’ public speaking skills through Pecha Kucha presentations. English Review, 6(1).
MacIntyre, P. D. (1999). Language anxiety: A review of research for language teachers.
In D.J. Young (Ed.), Affect in Foreign Language and Second Language Learning.
24-46. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Mak, B. (2011). An exploration of speaking-in-class anxiety with Chinese ESL learners.
System, 39, 202-214.
Matsuoka, R., Matsumoto, K., Poole, G., & Matsuoka, M. (2014). Japanese University.
Students' Willingness to Communicate in English: The Serendipitous Effect of Oral Presentations. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 18, 193-218.
McNiff, J. (2016). You and your Action Research Project. London: Routledge.
Murugaiah, P. (2016). Pecha Kucha style powerpoint presentation: an innovative CALL approach to developing oral presentation skills of tertiary students. Teaching English with Technology, 16, 88-104.
Orton, J. (2014). Comparing Teachers' Judgments of Learners' Speech in Chinese as a Foreign. Language. Foreign Language Annals, 47, 507-526.
Palacios, L. M. (1999). Foreign language anxiety and classroom environment: A study of Spanish university students (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Texas, Austin.
Pan, H. E. (2002). Motivating beginning EFL learners to speak English in class: An action research in an English speaking class at a junior high school
(Unpublished Master’s thesis). National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, ROC.
Pathak, A., & Le Vasan, M. (2015). Developing oral presentation competence in professional contexts: A design-based collaborative approach. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 4, 179-184.
Pearson, J. C., Child, J. T., & Kahl Jr, D. H. (2006). Preparation meeting opportunity:
How do college students prepare for public speeches? Communication
performance and attitudes. The Modern Language Journal, 76(1), 14-26.
Price, M. L. (1991). The subjective experience of foreign language anxiety: Interviews with highly anxious students. Language Anxiety, 87-97.
Robinson, R. (2015). Pecha Kucha: How to improve students’ presentation skills.
In European Conference on Language Learning. Brighton, United Kingdom.
Rossiter, M. J., Derwing, T. M., Manimtim, L. G., & Thomson, R. I. (2010). Oral fluency: The neglected component in the communicative language classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66, 583-606.
Scovel, T. (1978). The effect of affecting on foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. Language Learning, 28, 129-142.
Simona, C. E. (2015). Developing presentation skills in the English language courses for the engineering students of the 21st century knowledge society: A methodological approach. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 203, 69-74.
Stringer, E. T. (2013). Action research. Sage publications.
Trang, T. T. T., Moni, K., & Baldauf Jr, R. B. (2013). Foreign language anxiety:
understanding its sources and effects from insiders' perspectives. Journal of Asia TEFL, 10(1), 95-131.
Tsang, A. (2018). Positive effects of a programme on oral presentation skills: high-and.
low-proficient learners’ self-evaluations and perspectives. Assessment &
Evaluation in Higher Education, 43, 760-771.
Van Ginkel, S., Gulikers, J., Biemans, H., & Mulder, M. (2015). Towards a set of design principles for developing oral presentation competence: A synthesis of research in higher education. Educational Research Review, 14, 62-80.
Van Emden, J., & Becker, L. (2016). Presentation skills for students. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Vani, V. V. (2016). Enhancing students’ speaking skills through peer team teaching: A.
student centered approach. i-Manager's Journal on English Language Teaching, 6, 19.
Wang, Z. (2014). Developing accuracy and fluency in spoken English of Chinese EFL learners. English Language Teaching, 7, 110.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. (Expanded 2nd ed.).
Alexandia, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Williams, K. E., & Andrade, M. R. (2008). Foreign language learning anxiety in Japanese EFL university classes: Causes, coping, and locus of control. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 5, 181-191.
Woodrow, L. (2006). Anxiety and speaking English as a second language. RELC Journal, 37, 308-328.
Yaikhong, K., & Usaha, S. (2012). A measure of EFL public speaking class anxiety:
Scale development and preliminary validation and reliability. English Language Teaching, 5(12), 23-35.
Young, D. J. (1990). An investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking.
Foreign Language Annals, 23, 539-553.
Zappa-Hollman, S. (2007). Academic presentations across post-secondary contexts:
The discourse socialization of non-native English speakers. Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(4), 455-485.
Zheng, Y. (2008). Anxiety and second/foreign language learning revisited. Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education/Revue Canadienne Des Jeunes Chercheures et Chercheurs en Education, 1(1), 1-12.
Zuber-Skerritt, O. (1992). Action research in higher education: Examples and reflections. London: Kogan Page.