Reading at The University: Difficulty vs Fear (original) (raw)

The Cycle of Academic Reading Fear Among Undergraduates

Asian Journal of University Education (AJUE), 2020

This study investigates students' fear in academic reading as well as the influence of perceived difficulties in their reading comprehension. The paper aims to study the level of anxiety as experienced by undergraduate students in academic reading. Data from 25 respondents were analyzed quantitatively using Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) developed by Saito, Horwitz, and Garza (1999). The objectives of the study are to examine the influence of students' fear and perceived difficulties in academic reading. The findings of this study reveal that factors such as background and culture, general reading ability, vocabulary, grammar as well as teaching method can make readers fear reading. The results of this study bear interesting implications towards the teaching and learning of academic reading in English as a Second Language.

Students’ Reading Anxiety and Students’ Reading Comprehension

English Education Journal

The objective of the research was to find out the level of students reading anxiety and students reading comprehension. Data collection in this research was carried out using a research instrument in the form of a questionnaire EFL Reading Anxiety Inventory (EFLRAI) consisting 23 items and test to determine the level of students reading anxiety and 30 items of reading comprehension test. The data obtained were analyzed by descriptive statistical analysis. Based on the result of the research, it was conclude that students’ reading anxiety was in the high category with the mean score 2.72 means in the high anxiety. Sequentially top-down reading anxiety with the mean score 2.77, bottom-up reading anxiety with the mean score 2.74 and classroom reading anxiety with the mean score 2.29. While reading comprehension the mean score 2.72 implies that the students’ reading comprehension is in the poor category.

READING APPREHENSION AMONG HIGHER LEARNING LEARNERS

hile many of the educational stakeholders are concerned with the more communicative usage of the second language, educators as well as learners themselves are very much aware of their capabilities of understanding second language texts that will directly affect their ability to master reading materials. This study investigates the reading apprehension level of thirty-four respondents from a private higher learning institution. The Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) questionnaire was used as the instrument where mean and standard deviation were used as descriptive analysis. Results indicated that Linguistic Factors are the main factors that elicit reading apprehension among the second language learners.

An Elaboration on the Effect of Reading Anxiety on Reading Achievement

The presentstudy was an elaboration on the effect of foreign language anxiety on reading comprehension achievement of Iranian EFL learners. The participants comprised 100 BA students, doing General English Course in different academic fields at Islamic University of Neyshabur. The participants took a reading proficiency test of TOEFL and answered a likert scale reading anxiety questionnaire, derived from Sarson’s (1975) anxiety scale. The collected data were subjected to a set of parametric statistical analyses, including descriptive and inferential statistics such as one-way analysis of variance and post hoc tests. The findings presented significant differences among the participants at different reading ability levels. The students at the high and intermediate reading levelsdiffered significantly from the students at the low reading level in reading anxiety. To put it simply, there is a negative relationship between the students’ reading level and reading anxiety. The findings are of significance for language teachers as well as curriculum planners to reduce the affective filters and debilitating factors in language-learning environment to improve language learners’ reading ability. One important way to reduce reading anxiety is to expose language learners to comprehensible reading sources and culturally familiar texts, which develop learners’ feeling of reassurance and self-confidence.

Perception on English Reading Comprehension Anxiety (By Samphors Um)

The purposes of this study were to investigate the perceptionsof third year EFL students at the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL), Cambodia on their levels of English reading anxiety, and how they were related to gender and reading comprehension, and to explore the sources of their English reading anxiety. A group of 232 junior students participated in the current study. A multiple-method research methodology was employed by using a sequential design, beginning with a quantitative approach followed by a qualitative approach. For the quantitative stage, two survey questionnaires adapted from the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale by Saito, were administered to the participants. For the qualitative stage, a semi-structured interview was created and used to identify the sources of English reading anxiety from ten bottom list anxiety score students and ten top list anxiety score students. The quantitative findings revealed that third year EFL students perceived they had a low level of English reading anxiety and the level of English reading anxiety between males and females was found to have no significant difference. Moreover, the result from the questionnaire showed that third year EFL students perceived that their reading anxiety had a moderate effect on their reading comprehension.

Investigation of Students’ Reading Anxiety with Regards to Some Variables

International Journal of Higher Education, 2015

The aim of this study is to determine students' views on reading anxiety with regards to variables of gender and grade levels of the students and socioeconomic level of the schools. To this end, Melanlioglu's (2014) "Reading Anxiety Scale", a 5 point likert scale consisting of 14 questions, was used. The scale consists of following sub-dimensions: planning of reading process, factors supporting reading, reading comprehension and analysis. The universe for the study consists of middle school students in a city center in Central Anatolia Region in Turkey. The results of the study indicate that students "sometimes" had anxiety in reading comprehension and analysis sub-dimensions while they "rarely" had anxiety in the sub-dimensions of planning reading process and factors supporting reading. There was no significant difference with regards to the gender variable in the sub-dimension of factors supporting reading whereas there was a significant difference in favor of males in the sub-dimensions of planning of reading process and reading comprehension and analysis. With regards to the socioeconomic level of the school variable, it was observed that students from lower to middle class schools had higher levels of anxiety in the sub-dimensions of factors supporting reading, reading comprehension and analysis compared to students from upper class schools. The study also indicated that students' reading anxiety increased as they moved from one class to another.

Reading Anxiety among Second Language Learners

Many people assumed reading as an easy process. Not many know that reading process is not just one person understanding of each word and the surface structure represented in the reading text, but it also involves the comprehension process and the ability of the reader to actually interact with the reading text by making its own interpretation on the meaning of the text. Most people also do not realize that during this progression, anxiety has been stated as one of the factors which could impede the reading process. In fact, factors such as linguistic factor, cultural and the curricular content have been identified as some contributing factors to the further development of the reading anxiety. Thus, this study intends to identify the level of reading anxiety among 91 final year Science and Non-Science undergraduates in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru Campus. Questionnaire was adapted from Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) [1] using a five point Likert Scale. This paper intends to present and highlight the results of this study as knowing the results may be critical in reviewing or revising some of the reading subjects in the university in order to suit the needs of the second language learners.

Students’ Reading Anxiety in English Foreign Language Classroom

2017

This research was conducted to investigate students’ reading anxiety in an EFL classroom in a junior high school. There were 33 students of a junior high school in Bandung who participated in this research. Utilizing, qualitative descriptive method, this research investigated the levels of students’ anxiety and the causes of students’ anxiety in English reading class. The data were collected using Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (designed by Saito et al., 1999), a set of questionnaire (adopted from Ahmad et al. (2013)) and an interview to clarify the developed questionnaire. The research found that most of the students perceived anxiety in medium level (51,5%). The causes of students’ reading anxiety were based on then text feature including unknown vocabulary, which becomes the first rank of the causes anxiety followed by the unfamiliar topic, and the last is unfamiliar culture. From personal factor it was found that fear of making error is the first rank followed by worry ...

Secondary School Students’ Reading Anxiety in a Second Language

English Language Teaching, 2015

Developing an appropriate competence in reading in English as a second language is a key factor for subsequent academic success. This study investigated second language reading anxiety of secondary school students. A questionnaire was distributed to 72 female students and focus-group interviews were conducted with 19 volunteer students. Overall results reveal significant differences between the levels of reading anxiety reported by students relative to their general area of study (viz., science or arts). All the recorded differences were in favor of students in the science track. Most of the sources of reading anxiety that were identified by the students were related to language proficiency, specifically knowledge of vocabulary and grammatical rules.

The Relationship between Actual Difficulty of a Text and Iranian EFL Learners' Reading Anxiety

2015

This study examines the relationship between reading anxiety and difficulty of texts as well as the relationship between reading anxiety and students' perceived difficulty of the texts. Since difficulty is a relative concept, we limited its definition by sticking to the readability formula. Researchers also took students' perceived difficulty levels into account. Therefore, in the present study, with 30 advanced students of the Iran-Canada English Institute, researcher was interested in investigating the possibility of any relationship between foreign language reading anxiety on the one side, and actual/ perceived difficulty of texts on the other. To achieve this goal, researcher administered three reading comprehension tests with 3 different levels of difficulty to the participants, after completion of the test; the participants took a foreign language reading anxiety questionnaire too. Each text was followed by two additional questions; one regarding students' degrees ...