English Students' Strategies in Overcoming Public Speaking Difficulties in Public Speaking Class

This study was conducted to investigate the problems and the strategies in overcoming public speaking the difficulties. This study applied descriptive qualitative research the method. The participants of this research were eight students that had taken public speaking courses in English Department of UIN Ar-raniry batch 2016. The researcher used standardized open-ended interview to collect the data. The result showed that the problems faced by English Department students of UIN Ar-raniry in public speaking were anxiety, difficult to elaborate the ideas, lack of confidence, lack of time management, lack of vocabulary knowledge and forgetting some words or lines of the speech. Moreover, the strategies used by English Department students of UIN Ar-raniry in overcoming their speaking problems are practicing the speech in front of mirror or people, writing or noting the outline of the speech, improving self-awareness, using the pause to release the stress, recording their speech, trying to speak up in the class, using pecha kucha method and watching public speaking video.