Chinese Reading Anxiety Among Mongolian Students

Foreign language anxiety has been researched since the 1980s of the last century by many researchers who do a lot of important jobs at different perspectives, and make us know foreign language anxiety more and more. However, few people investigate this subject in China, and anxiety about Chinese learning is still in an early stage. Moreover the researching focus is oral anxiety, and other aspects of Chinese learning which can provoke anxiety for some individuals are ignored. Saito et al. (1999) found that contrary to previous teacher intuitions, reading in a foreign language can be anxiety provoking to some students, and levels of reading anxiety vary by target language and seem to be related to the specific writing systems. They argued that foreign language reading anxiety exists as a phenomenon related to but distinct from general foreign language anxiety. Along with acceleration of international popularizing of Chinese, it is urgent and important for us to make more efforts in studying Chinese reading anxiety.According to existing studies and pertinent literature, the following research questions were explored in this study:1. Does Chinese reading anxiety exist as a phenomenon distinguishable from general Chinese anxiety?2. Are there any significant correlations between anxiety and personal factors; for example, gender, expectation, perception of Chinese, months in China, motivation, character, and so on?3. What are the reasons which cause Mongolian students' Chinese reading anxiety?4. Does anxiety about Chinese reading affect comprehension?A total of 87 students from Mongolian National Humanity University participated in the study, and they were asked to complete several anxiety scales as well as a background questionnaire. After this, students completed two pieces of article and eight multiple choice questions. All data got from questionnaire, scales, and multiple choice questions were submitted to SPSS to obtain frequency scores and percentages for correlation and comparison analyses.Results indicate that Chinese reading anxiety exists definitely among Mongolian students, and distinct from general Chinese learning anxiety. Some personal factors, gender, expectation for example correlate with anxiety, however the other do not. What make Mongolian students stressful when reading Chinese are that they think Chinese characters to be the most complicated writing system in the world and try to understand every word, and that there is always a time limit when they read Chinese. There is a negative correlation between Chinese reading anxiety and comprehension, and the more anxious students feel; the lower they score in multiple choice questions.The present study suggests that in regard to learners, they should change their wrong perception about Chinese reading, and should learn and use some appropriate reading strategies; in regard to teachers, they should play their roles correctly, pay careful attention to the selection of texts, and do not correct every mistake of students.The present study further expands the scope of the study of foreign language, and provides some data for future research about Chinese reading anxiety. Furthermore, the study gives many pieces of advice about how to teach Chinese reading for foreigners especially for Mongolians. In a word, the present study argues that contrary to previous intuitions, Chinese reading can provoke anxiety to some students, and ignoring this will be dangerous. Teachers should try to make the learning context less stressful, and help students cope with the Chinese reading anxiety-producing situation.