a positive effect on language performance and students’ learning motivation
4. Discussion the result
4.1 What are the problems and factors that affect English communication of the students?
The results from the questionnaire show the answer of the research question, “What are the problems and factors that affect English communication of the students?” The result indicates that there are two main factors affecting students’ oral English communication. They are individual factors including anxiety, attitude toward English speaking, self – esteem, internal motivation, and personality and external factors including teaching methods, community, class environment, and class size. The problems of speaking performance are organized into three types. They are the of problems about basic knowledge in English language such as, using wrong grammar and structure, lack of knowledge about vocabulary, etc.; the individual problems such as fear of listener’s misunderstand, lack of motivation, despair of speaking English, etc.; and the problems from teachers and learning process in class such as, the number of students in class, lack of encouragement from teacher, etc.
The most important individual factor is the anxiety that is in line with Brown’s learning theory (2002). Brown said that anxiety was the main cause making students lose their desire of participation in oral class and get other negative factors. From Tuan & Mai’s study (2015), they claimed that internal motivation was the most significant affective factor. Their study showed the different result from our study. We think it is because of the different thought and belief of their participants compared to ours.
The most significant external factor is teachers’ teaching method. Our result is in line with the learning theory in Playlek’s study (2011). According to theory in her study, teaching method was one of the most important factors which affected students’ speaking ability. However, Playlek’s study showed that the factors from students were more important than other external factors.
Moreover, our study shows that the three main problems in speaking English are the problems about lack of basic knowledge in English language, individual problems, and problems from teacher and learning process in class. The result indicates that individual problems such as worry, anxiety, shyness, and fear of speaking are the biggest problems in speaking performance. Our study gets the same result as Ritthirat & Chiramanee’s study (2014). Their study showed that the problems and obstacles affecting students’ development of English speaking skill were worry and fear of speaking English.