Public Speaking Anxiety in Oral Presentation Class among Undergraduates

English speaking skill is deemed as an essential skill required by every employer globally. Locally, employers frequently mentioned that they chose not to offer employment to candidates because of their incapability to communicate well, especially in the English language. One of the reasons is due to the level of speaking anxiety experienced by second language learners. Hence, this quantitative study aimed to identify the level of public speaking anxiety and the correlation between students' public speaking anxiety in oral presentation class and English-speaking classroom performance among UiTM Shah Alam undergraduates. 150 students from UiTM Shah Alam were selected randomly for this study. Items from the Public speaking classroom anxiety scale (PSCAS) questionnaire by Yaikhong and Usaha (2012) were adapted to measure students' level of anxiety in speaking English. Inferential statistics (Pearson correlation) was used to analyse the correlation between students' public speaking anxiety in oral presentation class and English-speaking classroom performance. The findings showed that majority of respondents experienced a moderate level of anxiety. However, it is prevalent that despite having good academic results, most respondents had speaking anxiety during public speaking presentations. The findings of this study were consistent with prior studies conducted in the same area of language skill, and it is hoped that this may provide insights into developing speaking strategies to overcome speaking anxiety.