A Study Of Grade Nine Students’ English Reading Anxiety And Countermeasures

With the advent and the development of the humanistic psychology, majority of foreignlanguage researchers have been paying much attention to learners’“affective variables” sincethe1960s. In1980s, American linguist Krashen put forward the Affective Filter Hypothesis,in which “Anxiety” was taken as the one of the most significant affective variables that affectthe SLA or the foreign language learning practice. Horwitz then proposed “Foreign LanguageLearning Anxiety”(FLLA) different from the anxious phenomenon in the traditional field.Then “Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) formulated by Saito (1999) andhis colleagues’ efforts, presented that this language-specific skill anxiety, shared thedifferences and connection with FLLA. In China, for few studies had been focused in thefield, thus researchers in lines attempt to identify and enlighten more scientific details inlanguage practice instructively and meaningfully. Moreover, New English Curriculum forChinese Junior Middle School (Revision,2011) stresses “language teaching in China shouldcultivate the whole person, advocate the quality-oriented education, and foster students’positive emotions.” So English reading should help learners develop positive quality likeconfidence rather than expose learners to the anxious situations.Dr. Seligma (1998) made the “Positive Psychology” come into air. Seligma prioritizedpsychological research field focused on human positive strengths instead of on traditionalpathological side like mental sickness or anxiety. Moreover, the positive ideas that advocatepositive emotional experiences, positive personality traits, and positive social environment,were acclaimed by the world. Hence, author attempts to give some countermeasures from thisnew perspective to alleviate degree of RA.In this thesis, the author conducted research under the guidance of Positive Psychologytheory. The valid subjects (N=288), grade nine students are mainly from NO.6Middle Schoolin Shijiazhuang. A series of instruments like Saito’s (1999)(FLRAS) are used to carry outthis study. Finally, author summarizes that grade nine students have encountered relativelyhigh degree of RA; RA is negatively correlated with RP; significant difference is betweenhigh-anxiety and low-anxiety groups in RP; reading strategy is also negatively correlated with RA; male learners are significantly different from male in RA; learners’ different degreeof positive qualities like confidence, satisfaction, interest performance positivity are differentin RA, and the higher level of those factors are, the relatively lower level of RA; learners’personality has little impact on RA; lastly, resources and countermeasures are displayed.