GROWING FEARLESS BY WALKING THROUGH THE FEARS: CATALOGUING ANXIETIES AND COPING STRATEGIES OF THE ONES HAUNTED BY GLOSSOPHOBIA

Abstract

Public Speaking anxiety is a problem that continues and manifests itself in a variety of ways in schools, colleges and universities particularly among students learning English as a second or foreign language. The fear of speaking in public can come from a variety of places and affect each student distinctively. The current research describes the fears of students taking a public speaking course at a large private sector university in Pakistan along with the coping strategies they use to overcome them. For this purpose, data were collected from (n = 213) individuals and divided into two subsets i.e. anxieties and strategies. As according to the results found, (n=249) self-described anxieties of public speaking are documented in this study along with (n=35) tactics to overcome them. This study adds to our understanding of public speaking anxiety by doing an inductive analysis of students' anxieties of public speaking and a second analysis to coping strategies for public speaking anxiety. .