Reducing Public Speaking Anxiety with Behavior Modification Techniques among School Students: A Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the behavior modification techniques helps the students to reduce public speaking anxiety and enhancement in the Self-esteem. The fifty Students were selected purposively for the study on the basis of their Subjective Unit of Distress Scale (SUDS) developed by Wolpe (1990). The questionnaire Personal Report of Public Speaking Anxiety – 34 developed by McCroskey (2013) was adapted to determine the level of public speaking anxiety while holding the speech. Another instrument was Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) in order to measures global self-worth by measuring both positive and negative feelings about the self, before and after intervention. This is the study of fifty student of IX standard, Kendriya Vidyalaya. The students were assessed pre intervention and intervened with Behaviour Modification techniques for the period of Six weeks. The interventions used for the study were: (i) Public speaking with similar problem in the presence of similar group (Ganesan, 2008) (ii) Establishing dialogues with audience in a graded manner in groups one to twenty members (Ganesan, 2009) (iii) Purposeful faltering, while speaking to overcome fear of failure while speaking (Ganesan, 2010) and (iv) Perform voice and breathing exercises (Ganesan, 2012). The student’s SUDS, PRPSA-34 and RSE were reassessed after the period of six weeks interventions phase of how to manage their distress and results of the study indicate that the students experienced significantly less anxiety. The study reflected that the students experienced significantly less public speaking anxiety, decreased in their Subjective Unit of Distress Scale and increase in the self esteem. This shows that Behaviour Modification techniques are efficient in reducing public speaking anxiety.