Aisha Faryal

English has got the position of authorized language in Pakistan, widely used in various domains. In academic studies it is mandatory to teach English up to higher education. Mansoor (2004) estimates that newly graduate have studied English for at least 9 years recently. English is used as means for instruction in professional education like medicine, engineering and law.One of the most common issues in learning a foreign language is anxiety. Among the three affective factors (attitudes, motivation, anxiety), language anxiety is the most common issue. It is also one of the factors which influence language learning (Henter, 2013). Anxiety is defined as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system” (cited by Spielberger.1983). Horwitz (1986) revealed that in academic as well as social context anxiety in a foreign language is related to performance and suggested three kinds of anxiety. (1) Communicati...

In Pakistan, English is used as a second language in all academic and professional domains. Achieving oral fluency becomes obligatory for students so that they can proficiently participate in the formal discussions, debates and presentations. Communication Apprehension is the fear of speaking. It hinders the speakers from communicating confidently and fluently. The purpose of this paper is to explore the feelings of students during communication and to identify the level of oral communication apprehension faced by engineering students. In this study, quantitative method was used to measure communication apprehension among the respondents. Data was collected through surveys by using random sampling procedure and analysed through the SPSS software. An adapted version of McCroskey PRCA-24 instrument was used to conduct data, 18 items were selected according to requirement of this study. The questionnaire comprises of twenty-four items for respondent’s feelings while their communication...

In Pakistan, English is used as a second language in all academic and professional domains. Achieving oral fluency becomes obligatory for students so that they can proficiently participate in formal discussions, debates, and presentations. Communication Apprehension is the fear of speaking. It hinders the speakers from communicating confidently and fluently. The purpose of this paper is to explore the feelings of students during communication and to identify the level of oral communication apprehension faced by engineering students. In this study, a quantitative method was used to measure communication apprehension among the respondents. Data was collected through surveys by using a random sampling procedure and analyzed through the SPSS software. An adapted version of the McCroskey PRCA-24 instrument was used to conduct data, 18 items were selected according to the requirement of this study. The questionnaire comprises twenty-four items for respondent’s feelings while their communication with peers majorly in four tasks of communication: group discussions, meetings, interpersonal conversations, and public speaking.
The “meeting” section was omitted. The questionnaire was developed to measure the respondents’ communication apprehension in the above stated communicative tasks. The findings of the study show that the students have high communication apprehension during participation in public speaking and formal discussions whereas low apprehension was reported during participation in group discussions.
Keywords: Oral communication apprehension, Communication skills