Using Selective Error Correction and Group Work to Reduce Students' Anxiety of Speaking English in The Classroom

This research examines obstacles faced by Acehnese students in learning English, noting that many such students are highly competent in reading, writing, and listening, but not in speaking. It suggests that students are worried about making oral mistakes, which cannot be erased once uttered, and that oral activities completed in English class are often meaningless and irrelevant to daily life. The aims of this research are to find out the level of anxiety on speaking English of most students in the classroom and to discover whether selective error corrections and group work reduce students’ anxiety of speaking English. The writer used purposive sampling to choose the sample of this research. 30 students were selected from 2nd grade of Vocational High School, Masjid Raya, Aceh Besar by distributing foreign language speaking anxiety questionnaire developed by Horwitz et al (1986) to see the level of the students’ anxiety of speaking English. Meanwhile, to get in depth information to answer the research questions, pre-test and post-test were employed in this research. Then, the writer used selective error correction and group work as a method to see the way how to reduce students’ anxiety of speaking English. The result of this study showed that 15 of students with high level of anxiety, 12 students with medium level of anxiety and 3 students with low level of anxiety. In addition, the result of pre-test and post-test indicates that after getting treatment, students’ anxiety of speaking English was reduced. This is proved by the score obtained in both of tests; pre-test is 53 and post-test is 85. Thus, for this study the writer found that using selective error correction is a good way to help the students to reduce their speaking anxiety in speaking English in front of the class; in addition, dividing students into a group can make them easier to give their opinion for finishing their tasks.