Whereas most discussions of foreign language (FL) anxiety have centered on the difficulties caused by anxiety with respect to oral performance, this article discusses the possibility of anxiety in response to foreign or second language reading. It introduces the construct of FL reading anxiety, offers a scale for its measurement, and reports on a preliminary study of reading anxiety in 30 intact first‐semester classes of Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. The study found that contrary to previous teacher intuitions, reading in a FL can be anxiety provoking to some students. Whereas general FL anxiety has been found to be independent of target language, levels of reading anxiety were found to vary by target language and seem to be related to the specific writing systems. In addition, students’ reading anxiety levels increased with their perceptions of the difficulty of reading in their FL, and their grades decreased in conjunction with their levels of reading anxiety and general FL anxiety.

Japanese language study among American university students has dramatically increased since 1986. However, despite initial enthusiasm, high attrition rates have been reported. One reason often cited for this attrition is the perceived degree of difficulty of the Japanese language because of its “truly foreign” nature (Jorden and Walton 1987), which can be initially anxiety‐provoking for students whose first language is English. In the present study, the role of language learner anxiety, among other affective variables of students studying Japanese, is examined in relation to students' language performance at three different instructional levels. The results of the study indicate that with these students of Japanese the predictive variable of their performance was different from the beginning level to the intermediate‐ and the advanced‐level students. For beginning students, the Year in College was identified as the best predicting factor, while Language Class Anxiety was the best predictor for both intermediate‐and advanced‐level students. The results of the present study corroborate earlier anxiety studies in the commonly taught languages: in the finding that foreign language anxiety can have a negative impact on Japanese learners' performance. The present study, however, reveals that the influence of foreign language anxiety becomes more important as Japanese learners' instructional levels increase. It is clear that in order to reduce the debilitating effect of language class anxiety, teachers of Japanese need to become aware of these differences in terms of the learners' affective states and respond to them accordingly.

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A 3-year-old boy with agammaglobulinemia developed paralytic poliomyelitis on day 553 after being fed poliovaccine. Non-vaccine-like type 2' polioviruses were isolated from 22 stools obtained within 684 days after the onset of illness. Antigenic variations were observed among these viruses. The nonvaccine-like virus isolated 1 week after the onset of paralysis differed in virulence from the Sabin type 2 vaccine strain in the neurovirulence test in monkeys, and did not have the same antigenic character as the wild virulent strains. Another virus isolated on day 348 before the onset of illness was also classified as non-vaccine-like. However, the Sabin type 2 strain was shown to be homologous with this strain by the McBride test. Some Sabin-like particles were found in this stock virus. We may conclude that the non-vaccine-like virus isolates were derived from Sabin vaccine by antigenic variation that occurred during long-term multiplication in the intestinal tract.