The Effect of Anxiety on the Use of Oral Communication Strategies by Engineering Students in the Indian Context

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a study that aimed to find out the types of communication strategies (CSs) used and the frequency of their use by engineering students with high and low levels of anxiety. The data on students' anxiety level was collected by using Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) (McCroskey, 1982) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz & Cope et. al., 1986). To collect data on CSs, selected students were given three oral tasks: public speech, presentation and interview. By using a multi-featured advanced mobile with a good audio recorder, students' performances were audio recorded. To analyse the data, the taxonomy of communication strategies was adapted from Tarone (1977), Faerch and Kasper (1983), Ellis (1984) and Dornyei (1995). Results showed that high anxious students frequently used reduction strategies and low anxious students used achievement strategies more than high anxious students.