Some Reasons Why High School Students are Afraid to Speak English

by Gleacel Matibag-Hernandez PhD

Senior High School, Oriental Mindoro National High School

Communication is a vital part of day-to-day human interaction and a basic means of

socialization. In schools or any other learning institutions, some subjects are taught in English. In
classrooms, both students and teachers need to engage in the teaching-learning process using
English as a means of communication. On the contrary, not all students are equipped with the
eloquence and confidence when it comes to speaking English. Most of them hold back on doing
so for a number of excuses.
One of the underlying reasons why students are afraid to express themselves in English
is their fear of using faulty grammar. Most Filipino English speakers pay so much attention to
“perfect grammar” in both written and spoken language. This has become a source of pressure
amongst students who try their best to comply with the “unwritten rule” of the language.
Sometimes, they have a lot of ideas to share but they struggle following the basic rules of
grammar. Even following the basic subject-verb agreement rules is an obvious problem for most
of them.
Furthermore, the fear of pronouncing words incorrectly is another reason why students
cannot express themselves in English. Inside the classroom, most students feel the anxiety
whenever they are called upon by their teacher to say something. The common scenario is if
they do pronounce words incorrectly, they will serve as an instant laughing stock among their
classmates who seem to have high expectations. Hence, they will try to avoid being called upon
than to experience such embarrassment.
However, it is not only the fear of mispronunciation and faulty grammar that worry
students. Most of them are just simply not able to communicate or express themselves in
English for a lack of self-confidence. This lack of self-confidence boils down to their lack of
training exposure in effective communication. Because of the fact that they are not used to
speaking before an audience, simply saying a line or answering a question in English during
classroom discussion seems like a big task for them already.
Despite the fact that the curriculum provides a lot of learning opportunities for students
to develop and practice effective communication in English since their early years in school,
most of these students have a hard time composing their ideas which hinder them from freely
expressing their ideas.
Hence, more strategies and interventions should be formulated in order to help students
overcome their language issues and provide them great opportunities to express themselves
freely and creatively. Indeed, these language difficulties particularly in speaking should be taken
as a serious matter. It is high time for the modern students to develop a sense of themselves
through effective communication, that is through the strong efforts of the teachers and the
school.