Students´ anxiety level towards speaking in English: Malaysia polytechnic experience

English is the international language of communication and is widely used in Malaysia. The internationalization of the language has significantly affected the trend of globalization which increases stiff competitions from other foreign countries. Thus, in order to uphold with the competitiveness, students should be well equipped with a solid ability to communicate in English. In Malaysia, students of polytechnics are made compulsory to register for Communicative English courses in order to make them become confident in using the language as a mean of communication. However, students are found to show less participation in the lessons. Due to that reason, a study on the feeling of anxiety experienced by students in Communicative English classrooms was conducted in a polytechnic in Malaysia. The objectives of this study were to investigate students´ anxiety level towards communicating in English and to identify the types of speaking activities that caused high anxiety level among the students. The instrument used for the study was adapted from Horwitz´s (1983) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and named as ELCAS. The data obtained were analyzed using SPSS version 17.0 and were presented in the form of descriptive statistics. The study revealed that anxiety was experienced by a significant number of students when speaking English in the Communicative English classrooms and the students reported to be the most anxious when they had to speak English in class individually. Finally, some suggestions were discussed in order to help students reduce anxiety and become more confident to speak English in Communicative English classrooms.