Sheikh Ahmad, Ismail and Al-Shboul, Murad M. and Nordin, Mohamad Sahari and Abd Rahman, Zainurin and Ibrahim, Mohd Burhan and Madarsha, Kamal Basha
(2013)
The potential sources of foreign language reading anxiety in a
Jordanian EFL context: a theoretical framework.
English Language Teaching, 6 (11).
pp. 89-110.
ISSN 1916-4750 (O), 1916-4742 (P)
Abstract
The last decade has witnessed an increasing research trend on foreign language reading anxiety as a skill related
to but distinct from foreign language anxiety. However, sources of foreign language reading anxiety have rarely
been investigated. Thus, the current study responds to the study by (Saito, Horwitz, & Garza, 1999) and extends
the work of (Al-Shboul, Ahmad, Nordin, & Rahman, 2013b) in this specific area to propose a theoretical
framework that represents the sources of foreign language reading anxiety and to measure the extent of those
sources in the Jordanian EFL context. A cross-sectional survey of 1500 undergraduate students who were taking
Basic English courses was administered. A total of 1006 questionnaires were valid for analysis. However, only
408 questionnaires were randomly chosen according to the criteria of quota sampling techniques. The proposed
theoretical framework was tested to measure the prevalence of the sources of foreign language reading anxiety to
reveal that there were two aspects of foreign language reading anxiety: personal factors and text features. Under
the concept of personal factors, there were two main sources of foreign language reading anxiety; afraid of
making errors and worry about reading effects. On the other hand, there were three main sources of foreign
language reading anxiety under the concept of text features; unknown vocabulary, unfamiliar topic, and
unfamiliar culture. Implications to the study and recommendations for further research were considered.
Keywords: sources of foreign language reading anxiety, foreign language reading anxiety, Jordanian EFL
Context, Yarmouk University, theoretical framework
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