Fear of public speaking, state anxiety and performance: The case of interpreter trainees

This paper deals with how fear of public speaking relates to anxiety and performance using a sample of 197 conference interpreting students asked to interpret in a final examination as if in a professional setting. To do this, the subjects have to speak in public although in this action more elements are assessed apart from public speaking. To assess public speaking fear an abridged version of the questionnaire “Public Speaking Confidence” is used for the first time in an empirical study relating anxiety and performance. Results show that public speaking fear is related to anxiety and performance but this relation can only explain 11.5% of anxiety variance. On the other hand, contrary to expectations public speaking fear or anxiety show no relationship with performance in conference interpreting. Some tentative hypothesis and research lines are put forward to explain these results.