Research On The Correlation Between Reading Anxiety And Metacognitive Reading Strategies In Foreign Language Learning

In foreign language learning, numerous learner variables are generally said to influence the success or failure of language learning, among which, foreign language anxiety has often been cited as one of the most important affective variables; learning strategies, as the reflection of language learners'way of cognition and learning rules, play a very important role in learning process and exert great influence on learners'language development.Many previous studies show that foreign language anxiety has negative effects on language learning in most cases. By contrast, metacognitive strategies, one kind of the learning strategies, are significant for successful language learning. Most previous studies on foreign language anxiety focus on the field of learners'affective factors to find out ways in reducing it, such as from the perspective of its relationship with attitudes, motivation and self-esteem, but the results are not so desirable. This study attempts to explore how to reduce anxiety from the perspective of its relationship with metacognitive strategies, to identify the specific important role of metacognitive reading strategies in reducing reading anxiety in the perspective of reading in foreign language learning with the help of correlation analysis, etc. The study results show that metacognitive strategies, on the one hand, enable learners to take the responsibility of learning actively and to become independent in dealing with the individual learning problems during reading in order to improve their reading ability directly; on the other hand, they help to reduce learners'reading anxiety, which will influence their reading indirectly. Therefore, the implication drawn from this study stresses the importance of metacognitive reading strategy training, which sheds some light on strategy-based instruction in foreign language teaching, especially the teaching of reading.