Strategic Impromptu Speaking to Combat Anxiety and Develop a Public Speaking Personality

Abstract

Developing a public speaking personality of impromptu style is a battle that a second language learner is confronted with, where fear and anxiety act as enemies. This research is devoted to investigate how some preparation strategies could amour the learner to fight it. One hundred second-year undergraduates of the Faculty of Technology, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka received instruction on brainstorming ideas, preparing brief outlines, filling the outlines with examples, and speaking based on them. Ten sessions were created consecutively in which the learners practiced strategic impromptu speaking. The topics were drawn from university life, and the initial five minutes of each session were used for whole class discussions to assist the learners with ideas and vocabulary through a map on board allowing them to identify a unique focus for the individual speech. An initial questionnaire was administered after the second session to measure how the participants felt about the experience, and a post-questionnaire after the tenth session to measure whether, in their view, the speaking personality had grown. Six questions out of each were analysed, and the findings were encouraging. Further, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was applied on a question which required participants to rate their ability to speak in English, knowledge over speaking strategies, level of confidence and enjoyment of the exercise prior to and after the intervention. The p value of 0.00 (P < 0.05) revealed that there is a statistically significant improvement in public speaking personality. Feedback from the reflective journals was coded, and it proved the approach to be productive.