Alleviating Students' Anxiety in Speaking Through Project-Based Learning in Oral Description at the Eight-Graders of MTsN 4 Jakarta

benny hendiriana, m.pd; dr. ir. suciana wijirahayu, m.pd.; ujang suparman, m.a., ph.d.;

The implementation of teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language in MTsN 4 Jakarta has been facing many challenges that cause the students' lack of skills in speaking English, and the preliminary research conducted showed that anxiety is an affective factor that dominantly causes the lack of their English speaking skills. This study aimed to find out the process of Project-Based Learning (PBL) implementation through the oral description in order to alleviate the eighth-grade students‟ anxiety at MTsN 4 Jakarta. This was a descriptive research with mix-method approach, a quantitative was applied to know the percentage of each anxiety symptom showing the number of students who with the symptom, while a qualitative was applied to explore the nature of students‟ needs in learning English to presented the facts on the ground in a detailed view of the obstacles at students‟ speaking anxiety. The results of this study showed that 52.9% of students had increased speaking skills after the implementation of PBL and and at the final cycle of PBL, the three main factors - feeling anxious even if they were well prepared for English class; fear of being corrected directly by English teacher when they were speaking; and fear of being laughed by their friends when they were speaking - were still found but with a much lower percentage, which was less than 50%.