Study On English Reading Anxiety Of High School Students

Reading plays an important role in foreign language learning. In the process of foreign language learning, reading can help learners to get the abilities of listening, speaking and writing. However, during the process of foreign language reading, the acquisition of reading ability may be prevented by some affective factors, such as anxiety. Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis believes that learners are distracted by affective factors in second language acquisition, while foreign language anxiety is one of the most important affective variables in it. The Ordinary High School English Curriculum Standards(Trial, The Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2003) emphasizes students’ emotional attitudes,clearly pointed out that emotional attitudes are the most essential factors which affects students’ learning and development.In order to deeply study the reading anxiety state and sources of foreign language learners, at the end of 20 th century, Saito and his colleagues devised Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Seale(FLRAS). Nowadays, a lot of researches on foreign language reading anxiety are based on it. FLRAS was used so extensively because of it’s has high internal reliability and validity for the study of foreign language reading anxiety. Saito also reported that foreign language anxiety varies according to the target language and that it is of great theoretical and Pedagogical importance to understand how anxiety reactions in reading affect learners who study English as a foreign language. In reality,most of the available researches on reading anxiety nowadays are cross-sectional in nature or from the angle of college students while researches set on senior high school students, especially in China were even fewer. Therefore, the author thinks that it is of great pedagogical significance to study English reading anxiety among Grade 3 students. This research used quantitative and qualitative approach to study English reading anxiety amongthe Grade 3 students in Etuoke Banner High School. It aims to research the following questions:(1) Does English reading anxiety exist among Grade 3 students in Etuoke Banner High School? If yes, what is the reading anxiety state of these students?(2) Is their English reading anxiety related to some individual variables such as gender, personality, interest for English learning and self-perceived English reading ability?(3)What are the possible sources of English reading anxiety of Grade 3students in Etuoke Banner High School?The participants of this study are 201 students in Grade 3 of Etuoke Banner High School. This research used quantitative and qualitative approach and the data comes from questionnaire and interview. SPSS17.0 was used to deal with the data. Descriptive analysis, Independent Samples T-test,One-Way ANOVA, and Bivariate Correlation are used to analyze the data.The results of the data analysis shows that :(1) Students in Grade 3 of Etuoke Banner High School do experience a certain amount of English reading anxiety. The students suffer high level of reading anxiety when they are not satisfied with their reading ability, when they read unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar structure and when they meet with some articles about the western culture which they aren’t familiar with.They show comparatively low anxiety on the items about English reading interests and self-confidence. They do not worry about the reading materials with few unfamiliar words because they can guess the meaning from the context. They think that reading is not difficult if it becomes a habit.(2) There is a significant difference of English reading anxiety between male and female participants. Boys feel more anxious on English reading than girls. As for the personality, there is also a significant difference. The introversive participants experience more anxiety than the extroversive participants on English reading. With respect to the other two individual variables, interests in English reading and self-perceived English readingability, it shows that participants’ levels of English reading anxiety is significantly related with both their interests in English reading and their self-perceived English reading ability.(3) The research results shows that participants’ English reading anxiety are mainly resulted from: 1) unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar structure; 2)unfamiliar types of text and reading material; 3) limited reading time and reading speed; 4) lacking of reading strategies and incorrect reading habits; 5)culture difference.Based on the research findings, this study put forward some pedagogical suggestions for reducing students’ reading anxiety and improving their reading ability. At the end of the study, the limitations of the study and suggestions for the future studies were mentioned.