Role of Anxiety in Speaking Skills: An Exploratory Study

There is no doubt that the present-day professional students are expected to deliver presentations and enhance public speaking skills. Students in professional courses must be trained how to overcome anxiety in public speaking. Based on the concept of anxiety, the present study makes an attempt to find out whether anxiety plays a major role in classroom public speaking tasks in comparison with individual performance with their familiar friends. 30 engineering under-graduate students were asked to present on two different topics: one with their friends and the other with another batch of students whom they were not familiar with. It was observed that the familiar faces in the audience group helped to make the presentations better. Later, the students were asked about the strategies they used to overcome 'anxiety'. The study highlights that 'anxiety' plays a major role in public speaking skills which can be overcome with a few simple strategies.