The affective factors influencing students’ speaking ability

Considering speaking ability is one of the important abilities that students
have to master in learning English. However, most of their speaking
ability is low. It is caused by several factors, one of those factors is
affective factors (motivation, anxiety, and self-confidence). The research
aims to know what affective factors that mostly influence students’
speaking ability. This research applied quantitative design with simple
linear regression analysis. The sample of the research is 39 students from
two classes X science class and X social class at SMA Muhammadiyah 9
Surabaya. Questionnaire and speaking test used as the instrument of the
research. The result of the speaking test showed that the students’
speaking ability is below average. It is proven by the scores of students
speaking tests are mostly below the minimal completeness criteria that is
said by the school. The result shows that among three affective factors,
the most influential factor is self-confidence, and the second influential
factor is motivation. Meanwhile anxiety is proven not to influence the
students speaking ability. The findings show that the total significant
value of motivation is 0,011, anxiety is 0.063, and self-confidence is
0.007. It shows that speaking ability is influenced by motivation and self�confidence, but the result of the regression test shows that anxiety does
not influence students' speaking ability even though the data result of
anxiety is appropriate with the theory of the research. It can be caused by
various aspects such as students’ characteristics, class atmosphere during
the speaking test, and teacher attitude. So, the teacher should be fun when
setting up the atmosphere of speaking, no pressure, and make students
less anxious, so they don’t feel to be tested and to be assessed.