Speak Up: Overcoming Anxiety and build Confidence Through Public Speaking Activities (a Middle School case study)

Abstract

Speaking in public is known to be one of the most powerful skills that young people can acquire, promoting communication as well as confidence and strength, but in Libyan schools, the teaching of English is still characterized by grammar-based methods that provide limited support for oral practice conducive to structured classroom discourse. Female students, for example, often confront added cultural and social challenges to assert themselves in public, which, in turn, increases their communication apprehension. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of government on the confidence, public speaking anxiety, and general anxiety levels of Libyan middle school girls. A mixed-methods study was implemented with 60 students in experimental and control groups. The experimental group received an 8-week intervention of incremental difficulty speaking tasks, whereas the control group received traditional instruction. Data were collected by a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire (15 Likert items in four domains) and five open-ended questions. Paired and independent-samples t-tests, ANCOVA, effect size computations, and thematic content analysis of the qualitative responses were conducted. Results demonstrated substantial gains for the experimental group from pre to post-test: confidence increased; public speaking fear and general anxiety declined, as did student awareness that speaking is a learned activity. Qualitative themes depicted transformation from fear and anxiety to confidence and growth, and were associated with peer and teacher encouragement. The paper finally suggests that speaking tasks can be effectively used with young Libyan students in the EFL context, providing pedagogical and policy implications.