This study is to investigate foreign language anxiety of EFL junior secondary school students at the 8th grade of SMPN 16 Semarang. Spesifically, it sought to identify what factors that may contribute to students’ anxiety in speaking English based on the students’ perspectives.
The method used in this study was qualitative method with case study approach. Eleven perceivedly-anxious students were selected as the participants. The data were gathered through structured classroom observations and interviews.
The result of the study showed in two factors, they are internal factors (attitude, speaking in front of the class, being laughed at by peers, incomprehensible input, students beliefs about speaking English, lack of preparation) and the external factors (teacher personality, school environment, family environment)
These findings suggest that the teacher should be more aware of students’ anxiety in order to arise students’ motivation to speak up confidently and fluently in an English speaking class. As such, teachers are urged to be fairly creative in devising better techniques that could encourage the students to speak more. Finally, teachers should also provide materials which contribute to students’ vocabularies and confidence, so that the students have abetter performance in speaking English in the future.