Anxiety is a mind and body reaction that students experience, especially when speaking in front of the class. Anxiety is a form of weakness that makes students unable to carry out their competencies. The researcher must identify this problem to find solutions to encourage students‟ self-confidence and competence.
Therefore, this research aimed to find out the students‟ strategies to overcome their anxiety in speaking English and to find out the dominant strategy that the students used. The participants of this research were 36 students from eighth grade students of SMPN1 Selakau in the academic year of 2021/2022.
This research employed a descriptive design where the data was obtained quantitative and qualitative through questionnaires and interviews as the tools. To describe the students‟ strategies in overcoming their anxiety in speaking English, the researcher gave a questionnaire to the students based on the five strategies, namely preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, peer seeking, and resignation. The interview was designed to get further and more detailed information on the strategies students used to overcome speaking anxiety. Accordingly, before the interview, the researcher calculated the result of the students‟ questionnaire answers. Then, the researcher took ten students with the highest score to be interviewed. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic
analysis.
Based on the questionnaire result, students used four strategies in overcoming speaking anxiety, namely preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, and peer seeking. The highest percentage was preparation strategy there were 78,94%. The second strategy was positive thinking there were 72,22%. The third strategy was relaxation, there were 70,14%. The fourth strategy was peer seeking, there were 64,81%. Then, the lowest strategy was resignation, there were 47,22%. Based on the interview, preparation was also a strategy students mostly used an overcome anxiety in speaking English. Meanwhile, there were no students who
stated that they used the resignation strategy to overcome anxiety in speaking English. The students are suggested to use the four strategies (preparation, positive thinking, relaxation, or peer seeking) to make their confident and
minimize the anxiety in speaking English.

Keywords: Students’ strategies, Anxiety, Speaking English