Reading Anxiety Among English Majors In Chinese EFL Context

As one most important affective variable, language anxiety was preferred to be defined as a distinctive form of anxiety in response to language learning. Language anxiety impairs language learning mainly in terms of cognitive interference. The major significance of empirical studies on language anxiety is to examine anxiety-proficiency relationship. With the improvement of definitions and measures, more consistent findings have revealed the significantly negative correlation between language anxiety and proficiency, both global indices and specific performances or tasks.In more specific situations, research into language-skill-specific anxieties, such as reading anxiety, listening anxiety, and writing anxiety, began at the end of 20th century, with some significant results examining the validation of the concepts themselves, and their relationship with language proficiency. However, the research on FL reading anxiety and its findings are far from conclusive. Inconsistent results have been revealed concerning the relationship between general FL anxiety and FL reading anxiety. What's more, most participants involved in the research of FL reading anxiety are all about of intermediate proficiency level. Still, empirical studies on FL reading anxiety are obviously lacking in explorations of its causes and proposals of its reducing ways.To overcome those weaknesses, the study extended Shi and Liu's (2006) research to investigate FL reading anxiety in Chinese EFL context among learners at advanced proficiency level, and explored its sources from learners' perspective. A survey, consisting of a questionnaire, a reading test, and semi-structured interviews, was conducted to 136 third-year English majors in one Chinese university. The questionnaire, mainly including the FLCAS and the FLRAS, was administrated to measure participants' general FL anxiety and FL reading anxiety respectively, while scores from the reading test were obtained to evaluate their reading abilities, with TEM 4 scores representing overall proficiency. Correlation analyses and one-way ANOVAs were conducted. What's more, to explore causes of FL reading anxiety, replies to three relevant questions in the questionnaire and students' self-reports in the later interviews were collected, scrutinized and categorized.Analyses of the collected data yield the following findings: Firstly, FL reading anxiety is a construct related to, but distinct from that of general FL anxiety in Chinese EFL context. And those Chinese participants seem to experience higher FL reading anxiety than general FL anxiety. Secondly, FL reading anxiety is negatively correlated with overall language achievement and reading performance. So is general FL anxiety. However, the links between FL reading anxiety and reading performance, between general FL anxiety and overall achievement are slightly stronger than the other two, implying that FL reading anxiety is a more sensitive and appropriate predictor of reading performance, while general FL anxiety predicts overall proficiency more accurately. Thirdly, there are five categories of causes of FL reading anxiety classified from students' self-reports-tests, linguistic knowledge like vocabulary and grammar, content or world background information, learner factors, such as their negative self-evaluations, their states, and repertoire for reading strategies or habits, and environment for reading.The study is of pedagogical significance in that it helps to understand Chinese learners' feelings about English reading. It have offered some suggestions for instructors to reduce students' reading anxiety, such as admitting the normal existence of reading anxiety, teaching students some helpful reading skills or strategies, creating a comfortable environment for reading etc. However, due to several limitations, large samples from more sources should be involved to examine the nature of FL reading anxiety in future research, with its causes exploring from more perspectives, like those of teachers, theorists, and researchers. The proposals and validations of ways to reduce reading anxiety are also recommended.