Research On The Correlation Among Foreign Language Reading Anxiety, Cognitive Load And Reading Performance

Individual differences in foreign language learning have been attributed to bothaffective and cognitive factors. Anxiety and cognitive load are often reported as two ofthe key factors impeding foreign language learning performance. From the point ofcognitive psychologists, anxiety takes up part of individual working memory resourcesand lowers cognitive efficiency. Meanwhile, cognitive load theory assumes that humancognitive structure consists of working memory and relatively unlimited long-termmemory. The working memory capacity is very limited. When working memory isoverloaded, the learning performance will be impeded.There are many researchers who have made a lot of research on anxiety andcognitive load respectively from different perspectives over the past time. But fewstudies have taken into consideration the effects of both anxiety and cognitive load onlearning at the same time. Also there are few studies exploring the relationshipbetween cognitive load and anxiety. Considering that reading is a complex cognitiveprocess and reading is one of the most important ways to gain information in the age of“global village”, this study attempts to explore the correlation among foreign languagereading anxiety, cognitive load and reading performance.By random sampling, this study chooses93sophomores of English majors fromHunan Institute of Science and Technology, and employs SPSS13.0to classify andanalyze the results obtained from Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS)developed by Saito (1999), Cognitive Load Subjective Rating Scale developed by Pass(1992) and reading comprehension test paper (authentic reading materials from TEM-4of April2011). The normality of the data is checked at first. Then the PearsonProduct-Moment Correlation is applied to investigate the relationship among Englishreading anxiety, cognitive load and reading performance. Based on the results andanalysis of the data, the following correlations are found: there is a negativecorrelation between foreign language reading anxiety and reading performance, anegative correlation between cognitive load in fulfilling comprehension tasks andreading performance, and a positive correlation between foreign language readinganxiety and cognitive load.This research extends the studies concerning foreign language reading anxiety aswell as cognitive load theory. The findings in this study have significant pedagogicalimplications on English reading teaching and learning in China. The findings can stimulate English teachers to pay attention to the state of students’ English readinganxiety and cognitive load so that the negative influence of reading anxiety andcognitive load on reading performance can be reduced by appropriate teachingmethods and strategies and the students’ interest in English reading can also be arousedgradually. Therefore, the levels of English reading ability and reading performancewill be improved step by step.