Abstract This study investigated the systematic oral discourse errors and underlying causes of spoken English failures among Senior High School second language (L2) learners in the Division of Biliran during the 2024–2025 school year. Employing a descriptive-explanatory mixed-methods design, the research built a localized speech corpus and surveyed students across multiple academic tracks (STEM, ABM, HUMSS, TVL) using an adapted Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), alongside qualitative focus group discussions. Grounded in Corder’s Error Analysis, Selinker’s Interlanguage Theory, and Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, the integrated findings reveal a dual-dimensional crisis of internal cognitive-structural deficits (Linguistic Problems) and restrictive affective barriers (Behavioral Problems). Linguistically, limited vocabulary, inaccurate phonological execution, and a lack of syntactic automaticity create cognitive formulation bottlenecks that overload working memory, resulting in structural collapses, sentence fragmentation, and code-switching. Psychologically, these failures interact with heightened performance anxiety, low self-esteem, and fear of negative evaluation, driving students into a defensive cycle of communication apprehension, passive silence, and a total collapse of their willingness to communicate (WTC). This is further compounded by deficient reading habits that starve the receptive-to-productive linguistic pipeline. The study concludes that overcoming these systemic errors requires shifting away from rigid, lecture-heavy pedagogical models and disruptive hyper-correction. A unified, multi-stakeholder intervention is recommended: instructors must transition into empathetic facilitators using student-centered, task-based techniques and structured cooperative groupings; school leadership must provide low-anxiety institutional resources like non-graded language hubs; and students must actively cultivate psychological resilience by practicing strategic compensatory skills and consistent target-language reading.
Peña et al. (Mon,) studied this question.