[Empirical examination of training programs for the treatment of speech anxiety]

This study is the result of an attempt to get effective methods in order to reduce the students' speaking anxiety in seminars. In a prepost-design, two training programs are compared: systematic desensitization and assertive training. Success is controlled with the help of a subjective anxiety scale, the "Freiburger Persönlichkeitsinventar" (FPI), and by scanning how often and how long somebody is speaking in a seminar. The main results are: both of the training programs reduce speaking anxiety signficantly (perhaps with a little more success of SD), SD also reduces "Gehemmtheit" (FPI-Scale 8). There is a lot of difficulties with regard to the observation of the behavior variables but it seems to be that Ass increases speaking frequency in relation to the groups' mean, while this effect could not be supposed according to SD. At the end of the article, the results are discussed and some questions are raised with regard to the further research of training programs.