Al-Shboul, Murad M. and Sheikh Ahmad, Ismail and Nordin, Mohamad Sahari and Abdul Rahman, Zainurin
(2013)
Foreign language reading anxiety in a Jordanian EFL context: a
qualitative study.
English Language Teaching, 6 (6).
pp. 38-56.
ISSN 1916-4750 (O), 1916-4742 (P)
Abstract
In the last two decades, investigating the sources of foreign language anxiety in general has increasingly
attracted the attention of many researchers in the field of foreign language teaching. However, the sources of
anxiety that influence the acquisition of certain specific language skills such as reading in particular have rarely
been investigated. Thus, the aim of this study was to explore and understand the underlying problems and factors
that contribute to reading anxiety faced by EFL students at Yarmouk University, Jordan. It was a qualitative
exploration of the sources of English language reading anxiety for which observation, semi-structured interviews
and diaries were collected from six informants with different levels of English language proficiency. The
findings of the study revealed that there were two aspects of foreign language reading anxiety: personal factor
and text feature. Under the concept of personal factor there were also two main sources of foreign language
reading anxiety, which are: 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 feature, which are:
unknown vocabulary, unfamiliar topic, and unfamiliar culture. The five main sources of foreign language reading
anxiety were arranged according to their occurrences and percentages in the study. Moreover, recommendations
were proposed.
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