<![CDATA[Speaking ability is one of the important skills in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). However, EFL learners often experience speech anxiety which negatively impacts their verbal communication abilities. This study aims to examine the types of speech anxiety, the factors that cause it, and the psycholinguistic processes that occur when students experience anxiety when speaking in English. This research uses a qualitative approach with a descriptive design. Three EFL students were selected as participants through purposive sampling techniques. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the stages of data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawn. The results show that speaking anxiety most often arises in academic situations, such as presentations in front of the class and impromptu questions from lecturers. Factors that trigger anxiety include limited vocabulary, lack of grammatical mastery, and fear of negative judgments from others. From a psycholinguistic perspective, before students are able to pronounce words in English, they go through a series of cognitive processes, namely speech planning, translation, language processing, and lexical retrieval. Speech anxiety not only affects the emotional aspects of students, but also has a direct impact on their fluency in speaking, which is characterized by the appearance of pauses, doubts, stuttering, and difficulty expressing thoughts clearly. Keywords: speech anxiety, psycholinguistics, EFL students, language production, language processing]]>
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