“As I Think of My Presentation …” Tertiary-Level Efl Students’ Emotional Reactions Towards Oral Presentation

Oral presentation—a special form of public speaking in the context of second language (L2) learning—is a widely used activity at the tertiary level, both as a speech task and a form of assessment. While ample empirical evidence indicates that delivering a speech before an audience induces anxiety for most individuals, even when speaking in their native language, relatively little is known about the emotional experience of presenting a speech in a second language. To explore the emotional challenges public speaking in the L2 might pose to learners, this study examined tertiary-level EFL students’ emotional reactions to an upcoming in-class presentation. While the primary focus of the study was anxiety in response to L2 presentations, participants were unaware of this to ensure an unbiased assessment of anxiety’s importance relative to other emotions. A unique feature of the study is its focus on pre-presentation experiences, a topic hitherto unexplored in L2 research. The participants were 33 English Studies students from a Hungarian university. Their affective responses were investigated longitudinally, at three key junctures during the semester: (1) upon receiving the presentation task, (2) after deciding whether to present individually or with a partner, and (3) in the run-up to the presentation. Each time, participants responded to a short pre-task questionnaire with open-ended questions. The results have shown that anxiety was a prominent emotion during the pre-presentation period at all three significant events examined. It was detectable as soon as the presentation task was announced, influenced learners’ choices of paired rather than individual presentation, and showed a marked increase in the lead-up to the talk. The study has important pedagogical implications. Article visualizations: