Inhibitions
Oral classes are, by their very nature, rather 'public' affairs. The manner of production of oral language, even in L1, places demands on a speaker in many ways:
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Not only is the speaker controlling the production of communication systems which are different from those controlled by the writer, he is also processing that production under circumstances which are considerably more demanding! The speaker must monitor what it is that he has just said, and determine whether it matches his intentions, while he is uttering his current phrase and monitoring that, and simultaneously planning his next utterance and fitting that into the overall pattern of what he wants to say and monitoring, moreover, not only his own performance but its reception by his hearer. He has no permanent record of what he has said earlier, and only under unusual circumstances does he have notes which remind him what he wants to say next. |
It should come as no surprise, then, that many foreign language learners at all but the most advanced levels find this a most stressful experience. In a group discussion these demands are multiplied. The student has to keep up with the discussion, formulate an opinion, and intervene.
This is especially true of first-year undergraduates, who are very much concerned with how others view them, and who are characteristically affected by small fish / big pond syndrome. In other words, they will mostly have arrived fresh from intimate A-level groups, in which they will have been the strongest candidates, to find themselves engulfed in an often much larger peer group, alongside bilinguals and those who have spent a gap year working their way around a TL-speaking country. Such a candidate may find that they still hold the upper hand in grammar classes and writing exercises, but may suffer from an inferiority complex when asked to perform orally.
