RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY

Le Nguyen Doan Hien

Student ID: 2091401111018

Academic Writing

Saturday 1:00 PM

Mr. Pham Huu Duc

 Evaluating the Impact of Oral Test Anxiety and Speaking Strategy

Use on Oral English Performance

The purpose of the article is to explore the dynamic relationships between the oral

performance of English learners of different levels, their test anxiety, and the strategies they

employ to solve the communication problems that arise in the exam room.

To examine their hypotheses, Zhang and Liu (2013) had conducted 2 studies. The former

provided insights into the learners’ overall assessment of the favourable or unfavourable effect of

test anxiety, and their preferences for the 8 communication strategies (including social affective

strategies, fluency-oriented strategies, negotiation for meaning while speaking strategies,

accuracy-oriented strategies, message reduction and alteration strategies, nonverbal strategies

while speaking, message abandonment strategies, and attempt to think in English strategies).

Meanwhile, the latter delved into the levels of anxiety experienced and the communication

strategies utilized by learners of different levels of English proficiency (low, intermediate, and

high) as well as how these two affective factors meant to the final oral test results.

The conclusion was that anxiety had a significantly negative impact on learners’ testing

results despite the opposite belief by the majority of respondents. Learners also employed a

variety of communication strategies in the exam room. In particular, higher-proficiency learners,

who showed a lower level of anxiety, frequently used more successful communication strategies

(including social affective, fluency-oriented, and accuracy-oriented strategies, negotiation for

meaning while speaking strategies, and nonverbal strategies while speaking), and vice versa,

lower-level learners generally felt more anxious and made use of less successful strategies
(including message reduction and alteration strategies, message abandonment strategies, and

attempt to think in English strategies).

With these findings, the authors raised the need for the specification of test anxiety in the

marking criteria of future oral tests in order to minimize the unfavourable effect of test anxiety.

They further emphasized the understanding of communication strategies among second language

learners and the use of strategy-based activities and materials in teaching speaking. However, as

stated by Zhang and Li, they did not address other affective factors that may affect learners’ oral

test performance, such as culture and body language, which is open for future discussion and

research.
 References

Zhang, W., & Lin, M. (2013). Evaluating the Impact of Oral Test Anxiety and Speaking Strategy

Use on Oral English Performance. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 10(2), 115-148.