Abstract
This study investigated foreign language speaking anxiety of Saudi tertiary students and the differences between them according to gender and year level. The results indicated that Saudi students experience an overall moderate level of speaking anxiety with an average mean of (3.31). The results showed that speaking anxiety of Saudi EFL students is mainly due to test anxiety reasons followed by communication apprehension and fear of evaluation reasons. These anxiety sources were not in the same order when analysing the differences according to gender. On the one hand, Saudi male students consider negative evaluation as the highest anxiety causing and communication apprehension to be the least. Female students, on the other hand, believe that test anxiety is the most anxiety causing factor and negative evaluations as the least. The results also revealed that second-year students experienced the highest level of anxiety whereas first-year students had the least. However, these differences were not significant. The study also provided implications and future research suggestions based on the results.