Anxiety In Public Speaking

Public speaking anxiety

Public speaking is a common anxiety among university students and the general population. Some estimate that as many as 20- 85% of people experience more or less anxiety when they need to speak in public (Louise Katz, 2000). Public speaking anxiety is defined as to ‘the subjective feeling of uneasiness, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system’ by Spielberger (1983). Furthermore, Chorpita and Barlow (1998) also mentioned that anxiety is a state of conceptual or central nervous system characterised by activity of the behavioral inhibition system. In fact, everyone has anxiety, especially when the individual is speaking in front of an audience. It is said that public speaking will get even the most prepared person anxious (Paalhar, 2000). Beatty (1988) pointed out that an individual might even suffer from trembling knees, shaking voice, speaking quickly or slowly, or some might even have a flat voice when one’s nervous symptom occurs. Furthermore, anxiety can also happen to an individual who has years of public speaking experience. Public speaking anxiety is a very common feeling for most people (Paalhar, 2001 cited in Hsu,Tsu-Chia, 2011). Many people would feel greater nervousness when they are on the stage and afraid of interacting with the audience. More specifically, when the audience remains in silence, the speakers will get more anxious, and forget what they want to say (Kenneth & Melvin, 2008