A Study On English Reading Anxiety Of Vocational College Students

As one of the four basic language skills,English reading plays an important part in the process of English learning.For vocational college students,reading is a necessary way to input language information and cultural knowledge.In addition,reading takes up a large proportion in English exams.Therefore,it is vital to improve students' English reading ability.Foreign and domestic researches have claimed that anxiety can greatly influence English reading.However,it is hard to find some researches that center on discussing the anxiety state of vocational college students.This research,based on the theoretical foundations of humanistic psychology and Krashen's affective filter hypothesis,applies foreign language reading anxiety scale and face-to-face interview to investigate the reading anxiety situation of 100 participants majoring in Tourism Management in Guilin Tourism University.This research mainly explores three aspects of reading anxiety,including the anxiety level,the male group's anxiety state and the female group's anxiety state,as well as the anxiety sources.The research has some important findings.Firstly,it shows that vocational college students have seriously anxious feelings.Secondly,both the male group's students and the female group's students have English reading anxiety,but the anxiety level of the male group is much higher than the female group.Thirdly,the potential sources of reading anxiety mainly fall into the absence of positive reading attitudes,the absence of cultural knowledge,and the absence of solid language knowledge.Based on the potential sources,teachers should help students build positive reading attitudes,as well as strengthen exercises of language knowledge and skills.It is also important to introduce foreign culture and custom to students in the reading class.However,two aspects of limitations are also embodied in the research,which include the small size of samples and the drawbacks of research instruments.In the future researches,it is necessary to broaden the range of participants and add the numbers of participants.In addition,more comprehensive instruments should be applied to investigate reading anxiety,such as case study and classroom observation.