A Study On The Relationship Between English Reading Anxiety And English Reading Strategies

With an increasing interest in individual differences, the effect of affective factor, one of the key components of individual differences, has been investigated by more and more researchers. As one kind of affective factor, anxiety naturally gets much attention. Since the first study on foreign language anxiety carried out by Horwitz et al (1986), studies in this field have been carried out gradually. Although many studies on anxiety concentrate on one aspect of English learning, such as listening and speaking, the theory was that foreign language learning anxiety proposed by Horwitz et al. Anxiety concerned with foreign language reading which is first distinguished by Saito et al (1999) also draws much attention, and many meaningful results concerned with reading anxiety have been gained. However, the sad truth is that there are not so many studies concerned with the relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategies, let alone the studies with female English-major postgraduates.Based on the concept of individual learner differences and the hypothesis of affective filter of Krashen, this study aims to investigate the situation of female English-major postgraduates’reading anxiety and reading strategies, and to identify the relationship between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategies with two questionnaires:revised version of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) and English Reading Strategy Scale (ERSS). The subjects are112female English-major postgraduates in a national key university in Nanjing, and all the data are analyzed by SPSS (16.0). On the whole, Chinese female English-major postgraduates do have certain level of English reading anxiety, which is pretty high compared with subjects in some other studies (Saito et al1999, Wang2007, Zhou2008). Besides, female English-major postgraduates in general apply all six kinds of reading strategies at a level a little higher than moderate level. There is a significant negative correlation between foreign language reading anxiety and reading strategies. The findings also show that the higher the level of reading anxiety, the less likely students would apply reading strategies. The results reported through SPSS (16.0) also show that only low anxiety group is found to have a significant negative relationship with almost all six kinds of reading strategies, which means students of moderate or high anxiety level use reading strategies very randomly and even that subjects with low anxiety are still negatively influenced by reading anxiety in their choice of reading strategies. The results can stimulate English teachers to pay more attention to students’reading anxiety in class teaching and after class reading. As a result, the negative influence of reading anxiety on reading strategy choices may be reduced, and naturally students’ reading confidence and interest can be increased correspondingly.