A Study Of English Reading Anxiety Of Non-English Majors In Higher Vocational Colleges

Reading is the main source of foreign language input.A lot of research has shown that both cognitive factors and affective factors have a great influence on reading effect.Anxiety is an important aspect of affective factors.Saito,Horwitz and Garza first put forward the concept of foreign language reading anxiety,demonstrating that it is a language-specific-skill anxiety which varies according to the specific target language(Saito et al.,1999).Most of the studies explored the relationship between English reading anxiety and English reading proficiency and its influence on English reading effect.However,investigations targeting non-English majors in higher vocational colleges are far from enough and recognized conclusions haven’t yielded yet.To overcome these weaknesses,based on humanistic psychology and Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis,215 non-English major freshmen from one of China’s higher vocational colleges were chosen as the subjects of the present study to explore the influences of English reading anxiety on English reading achievement and its differences on students with different reading proficiency levels.Specifically,three research questions are studied as follows:1)To what degree are non-English majors in higher vocational colleges suffering English reading anxiety?2)What’s the relationship between English reading anxiety and reading achievement of non-English majors in higher vocational colleges?3)What are the English reading anxiety differences of non-English majors in higher vocational colleges in different reading achievement groups?The study adopted English Reading Anxiety Scale(ERAS for short,adapted from Saito et al.’s Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale),reading comprehension test of Public English Test System-Band2(PETS2)in 2016 and semi-structure interview as research instruments.All the collected data were processed and analyzed by the use of social science statistical software SPSS 21.0.The results of the research show that:1)non-English majors in higher vocational colleges do experience English reading anxiety and the degree surpasses medium level overall.2)English reading anxiety has significantly negative relationship with English reading achievement,and English reading anxiety can predict English reading achievement to some extent.3)Reading achievement groups at high level,medium level and low level have significant differences on English reading anxiety,and low level group score the highest on ERAS on the whole and its five factors,followed by high level group then it is the medium level group which demonstrates that students with low level reading proficiency suffer the highest reading anxiety then comes students with high level reading proficiency and the last is students with medium level reading proficiency.In short,students with different reading proficiency levels perform variously on English reading anxiety.The findings above echo with the viewpoints of humanistic psychology and Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis,namely affective factors have great influence on students’language learning process and learning effectiveness.The present study further enriches the research of English reading anxiety and it is of certain significance both in theory and practice to the learning and teaching of English reading.Based on the above research results,the present study puts forward some suggestions on English reading teaching in higher vocational colleges.English teachers should first realize the existence of English reading anxiety then help students realize it is a common and normal situation.Besides,English teachers should choose teaching materials that are moderately difficult and give positive feedbacks on students reading performance to enhance their self-confidence.