A Correlation Study On Genres And English Reading Anxiety Of Non-English Majors

Second language researchers and theorists have long been aware that language anxiety isassociated with language learning. Although extensive researches have obtained informativefindings concerning the connections between English learning and anxiety, few studies havehitherto been found to be devoted to the different genres and English reading anxiety. Thepresent study was designed to examine the anxiety caused by different genres in reading.The study was carried out among70Economics major students, who were sophomoresin Modern College of Arts and Science of Shanxi Normal University. It was conductedthrough the combination of two means: quantitative study and qualitative study. Aquestionnaire was used in quantitative study and the data were analyzed through SPSS17.0.In terms of qualitative study, three students were selected to do Think Aloud Protocols and theinformation gave a further understanding of how different genres were related to anxiety.This study achieved several important findings listed as the follows:First of all, there was a negative correlation between English reading scores and anxiety.The higher the scores were in English reading, the lower the anxiety was.Secondly, participants in different English levels showed different anxious performancewhen reading different genres. It could be found that when reading narration, there was asignificant difference in reading anxiety between high-scored and low-scored students. It canbe found in the Multiple Comparison that there is no significant difference of anxiety betweenhigh-scored and low-scored participants or high-scored and intermediate-scored students or intermediate-scored and low-scored students when they read the practical writing. In terms ofexposition, there was significant difference of anxiety between high-scored andintermediate-scored students as well as with low-scored students.Thirdly, females got higher marks than males did in English reading. There wassignificant difference in reading scores in terms of gender when they read narration andpractical writing. However, there was no significant difference in reading scores betweenmales and females when they read exposition. Another finding was that there was nosignificant difference in anxiety between males and females.On the basis of the above findings, the author proposed two suggestions for teaching: Forone thing, university should integrate the genre-based teaching method into the reading class.While explaining the reading materials, teachers should involve the text types, structures andthe features of language use. For another, compared with the traditional class which lacks thecontent of strategies, current class should pay attention to a variety of strategies so as toimprove the initiative and efficient reading.