A Survey of Communication Apprehension in English Among Engineering Students

Abstract

In Pakistan, English is used as a second language in all academic and professional domains. Achieving oral fluency becomes obligatory for students so that they can proficiently participate in the formal discussions, debates and presentations. Communication Apprehension is the fear of speaking. It hinders the speakers from communicating confidently and fluently. The purpose of this paper is to explore the feelings of students during communication and to identify the level of oral communication apprehension faced by engineering students. In this study, quantitative method was used to measure communication apprehension among the respondents. Data was collected through surveys by using random sampling procedure and analysed through the SPSS software. An adapted version of McCroskey PRCA-24 instrument was used to conduct data, 18 items were selected according to requirement of this study. The questionnaire comprises of twenty-four items for respondent’s feelings while their communication with peers majorly in four tasks of communication: group discussions, meetings, interpersonal conversations and public speaking.

The “meeting” section was omitted. The questionnaire was developed to measure the respondents’ communication apprehension in the above stated communicative tasks. The findings of the study show that the students have high communication apprehension during participation in public speaking and formal discussions whereas low apprehension was reported during participation in group discussions.