Communicating Advice by Atkins-Sayre Wendy / Yook Eunkyong L
Author:Atkins-Sayre, Wendy / Yook, Eunkyong L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2015-08-07T00:00:00+00:00
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HELPING STUDENTS CONQUER ANXIETY IN THE SESSION
Karen Kangas Dwyer
When students first come to a peer tutoring center, many bring anxiety with them. Not only are they anxious about giving their first speeches or taking their first exams, but also many are nervous about coming to a peer tutor or consultant for help. Some wonder if they can be helped. Some may experience such an overwhelming anxiety that they will have trouble completing a class without assistance (McCroskey, 2008), while others have previously dropped a course when their instructor encouraged them to get treatment (Proctor, Douglas, Garera-Izquierdo, & Wartman, 1994). Students need to be reassured, however, that they can be helped and that tutors or consultants are trained to offer them assistance. They cannot do their homework or write their speeches, but they can guide them through the many steps and processes to help them be successful in the work required for their classes.
Students need to hear that some anxiety, especially communication anxiety, is normal. There is no need for students to feel they are odd or alone in their apprehension. For example, communication research confirms that up to 70% of college students report anxiety about giving a presentation (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012a; McCroskey, 2000). That means that in every public speaking class of 25 students, it is likely that up to 17 of those students will feel anxious about giving a speech. Anxiety is common in other disciplines too. Up to ← 155 | 156 → 80 percent of community college students and 25 percent of four-year college students report suffering from math anxiety (Jones, 2001; Yeager, 2012), while writing anxiety is so prevalent on college campuses (Baez, 2005) that it has become a significant concern for university faculty (Cheng, 2004). Thus, students will begin to feel relief when they realize their assignment anxieties are experienced by many and, in fact, are considered normal.
The good news for anxious students is that peer tutoring centers can help them conquer much their anxiety. In fact, communication research shows that the more students visit a communication center, the more they report a reduction in their speech anxiety, an increase in their confidence in public speaking, and higher grades (Dwyer & Davidson, 2012b, 2014; Ellis, 1995; Jones, Hunt, Simonds, Comadena, & Baldwin, 2004).
The goal of this chapter is to advise tutors on how to help anxious students, based on established communication scholarship. Specifically, this chapter will provide tutors with possible causes of anxiety, as well as the approaches and techniques that might help students. Although the techniques are drawn primarily from communication research because treating speech anxiety is so well researched, most of the techniques have been found to be helpful for other types of tutoring, as well.
The Causes of Anxiety
Communication researchers have discovered several causes for speech or communication anxiety and it is often helpful for tutors and anxious students to understand the causes of the anxiety so they can take action to reduce it. Although the causes of speech anxiety
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