Glossophobia: An Assessment on Prevalence of Public Speaking

Anxiety among Student-Teachers of University of Cagayan Valley

-Tiburcio C. Gallibu : gallibu.tobs@gmail.com / 0906-666-7322

INTRODUCTION
Most people are not born to be public speakers; they are up
skilled to become one. Many people tends to avoid when they are
asked to speak in public that leads to be frightened when doing
so at some point in their life. In front of the public and will
be delivering a dialogue is one of their greatest fears for many.
Public speaking is estimated that 75% of all people suffer from
fear of public speaking according to Yale (2020). In addition,
Public speaking is often said as one of the most pervasive fears
second to fear of death.

The terror of public speaking affects the speaker

physiologically, for example, some may experience dryness of
mouth, rise in blood pressure, reddening of face, perspiration,
asymmetrical breathing, and emotionally, as they fear
embarrassment and looking stupid and silly as stated by Kushner
(2017). In fact, almost every speakers feels the same emotion
that such people should need to realize. As for every process,
communicative competence is an essential skill on immense
majority of careers that should be develop formally upon academic
trainings.

Public speaking competency is crucial for educators as

professionals are expected to habitually keep on utilizing it.
Verderber, Sellnow, Verderber (2011) states, “Public speaking, a
sustained formal presentation by a speaker to an audience, is
simply one form of human communication. So learning to be an
effective public speaker will help you to be more effective in
other communication settings as well”. Many students-teachers get
incredibly nervous the first time they have to do teaching
presentation in front of their classmates but with practice the
nerves subsides with the improvement of speaking styles,
intonations and the rest they will usually begin to enjoy the
whole process. Teaching the pre-service teachers the necessary
skills for doing this will therefore help them to do this more
successfully. As a result of the practice that utilizes the
communication skills of pre-service teachers can help them
increase their general confidence as well as a sense of
achievement.

Many studies have already been conducted on public speaking

anxiety for evaluating mainly symptoms and definition in
different professions. Then, this anxiety can act as a hindrance
on improving the employability skills that could be both personal
and professional distress; hence student-teachers need to develop
strong communication skills to enable them to become more
confident enough.

The researcher thought of conducting this research about

Glossophobia to determine among student-teachers the prevalence
on public speaking anxiety. Specifically it tries to answer the
following questions: 1.) Which of them have more prevalence on
speaking anxiety when grouped according to the following profile
variables: a.)Age; b.)Major; c.)Gender. 2.) What dominant factors
are responsible for the public speaking anxiety among the
student-teachers of University of Cagayan Valley? 3.) What are
the alternative activities do the participants sought in order to
cope with the prevalence of public speaking anxiety?

This study will be conducted to the graduating student

teachers of University of Cagayan Valley. The researcher will be
using an observational-cross sectional study and stratified
sampling for student teachers in the elementary education and
different fields on secondary education. This study will be using
a survey questionnaire, the respondents are subject to fill out
the Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety (PRPSA) and
researcher-made questionnaire will be entered on Epidata and SPSS
Statistics 26 for data analysis. Independent T-test and ANOVA
will be utilized to determine the significant difference on the
level of public speaking anxiety of the respondents when grouped
according to profile variables. Then, the result of the study
will add to the existing actions and recommended strategies on
improving teaching skills of the Education students to be more
globally competent and Job ready professionals.