The Relationship between English Reading Anxiety and English Reading Comprehension among EFL Non-English Majors in a Vocational High School

• Main Authors: Tsui-chen Hou, 侯翠貞
• Other Authors: Chin-ying Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/46644775974967145761

碩士 === 朝陽科技大學 === 應用外語研究所 === 97 === The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between English reading anxiety and English reading comprehension among EFL non-English majors in a vocational high school in central Taiwan. The participants of the questionnaires consisted of 277 EFL non-English major third-grade students recruited from 11 non-English major departments in a vocational high school in Taichung County. Participants were required to complete Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale, Foreign Language Learning Motivation Scale, Background questionnaire and English reading comprehension test of General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 13.0 for Windows was administered to compute the data. Pearson product-moment correlation and Stepwise Regression were used to discover the correlations between English reading anxiety, English reading comprehension and English learning motivation. One-way ANOVA and t-test were applied to distinguish differences between English reading anxiety and English reading comprehension among participants with different background variables. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the results. The major findings of the study were as follows. First, there was a significant negative correlation between English reading anxiety and English reading comprehension. Second, there was a significant negative correlation between English reading anxiety and English learning motivation. Third, there was a significant positive correlation between English reading comprehension and English learning motivation. Fourth, there was a significant correlation between English reading anxiety and experience of taking GEPT. Besides, participants from different departments showed different level on English reading anxiety. Finally, female participants and those who had the experience of taking GEPT had higher English reading comprehension proficiency. Owing to the score of English reading comprehension takes high percentage of English test on entrance examinations in Taiwan nowadays, there were implications that we could draw from this study. First of all, instructors should take the impact of learning anxiety of the students into account while giving lessons. Moreover, instructors should try to increase their students’ English learning motivation and help students to gain more of self confidence in English reading so to avoid students’ English reading anxiety and this would be considered as one of the greatest teaching achievements of every instructors involved with teaching English to EFL non-English majors.