抄録
The study investigated anxiety of Japanese EFL students towards making a presentation in English in an oral presentation contest. Japanese students’ language anxiety was measured using a questionnaire and a Japanese version of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Yashima, Noels, Takeuchi, Yamane, & Yoshizawa, 2009) prior to and after the speech contest that was held at the end of semester. Two research questions were posed for the study: 1) how the speech contest affected students’ anxiety and 2) whether there was a difference between the students’ anxiety that participated in the contest as presenters and that participated as audience. A total of 85 university students participated in the study, and the results showed that although there was no significant difference between presenters’ and audience’s anxiety, devising the oral presentation contest had a statistically significant effect on reducing students’ speech anxiety towards making a presentation in English overall, suggesting that implementing an oral presentation contest in Japanese EFL context may have a positive effect on students’ foreign language anxiety.
