A Phenomenological Exploration of Silence and Mental Blankness in English Speaking Assessments and Classroom Presentations

Abstract

The most cognitively and affectively demanding task a learner can face is speaking English as a second language under evaluative pressure. Silence and mental blankness are the underexplored dimensions of this experience. This study is grounded in Eysenck et al.'s (2007) Attentional Control Theory (ACT) and Krashen's (1982) Affective Filter Hypothesis to explore how and why ESL learners in the Pakistani higher education context experience silence in speaking assessments and classroom presentations. A qualitative phenomenological design was used with semi- structured interviews as a tool to collect data from fifteen learners studying at a private university in Karachi, Pakistan. Thematic analysis of the interview data revealed that a failure to retrieve lexical items, heightened physiological arousal, fear of negative evaluation, self-monitoring, past traumatic experiences, and over-reliance on technology caused the learners to go silent. This study foregrounds silence not as a passive absence of speech but as an active cognitive event where attention, affective, and linguistic systems interact with each other. Findings suggest that educators should introduce strategic intervention during speaking assessments to reduce cognitive load and affective barriers.