Investigating the relationship between the foreign language reading anxiety and reading proficiency: a case study of preparatory year students at the University of Jeddah

Saleh Mohammad Ali Alqahtani

doi:10.20952/revtee.v13i32.14858

Abstract

This study is an in-depth analysis on the association between the anxiety experienced known as Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and the proficiency in reading exhibited by the preparatory year students. The Saudi learners from the science and arts stream and the gender were also considered as the moderator variables for this study. A mixed group of 84 students from both the genders of the preparatory year studying English at the Institution of Languages from the University of Jeddah were considered as the variables for this research. The participants were measured on as 20-item Likert-style Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale and examined by undergoing a 20-item proficiency test in reading a comprehension and a demographic questionnaire. The data was analyzed by applying The Pearson product moment correlation, t-Test, and descriptive analysis. The results indicated that the anxiety level while reading had varied values from moderate to high most of the respondents in the test were found to be in the moderate anxiety group. In addition, a notable negative relationship was found to be existing between the FLRA and the reading proficiency. The association existing between the foreign language reading anxiety and the group field was identified in this study. Analyzing the concept considering the gender, the female students were identified to experience more anxiety compared to the male students involved in the study. The findings of this study are advantageous to the language teachers and the curriculum planners too. It enables them to decrease the deteriorating and weakening factors in the classroom and thereby improve the reading ability of the language learners’. Reducing the reading anxiety amongst the learners can be achieved by exposing the language learners to understandable reading texts and familiarize them with cultural texts. This in turn develops the learners’ self-confidence and motivates them to be better readers.

Highlights

The influencing in the reading process has been an important subject of study during the last two decades
The researchers in this paper present their findings on the interdependency and the correlation between the Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) and reading proficiency as well as other variables i.e. gender and age
The findings indicate that English reading skills have been found to be negative in relation with the anxiety generated by the exam and foreign language reading anxiety

Summary

Introduction

The influencing in the reading process has been an important subject of study during the last two decades. The skill of reading is identified as one of the important skills to be equipped by many L2 language learners and in particular by the university students undergoing courses and studies related to EFL. Horwitz, Cope (1986) identified that anxiety caused by reading a foreign language is experienced due to the conflicting ideology between the mature thoughts of the foreign language student and the immature proficiency in their unfamiliar language. It is further noted in their studies that foreign language anxiety as a unique and a multifaceted phenomenon

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