Foreign Language Reading Anxiety in a Jordanian EFL Context: A Qualitative Study

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.

The Potential Sources of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety in a Jordanian EFL Context: A Theoretical Framework

“…There are different types of validity but in line with the previous work which demonstrated the analogue of validity when credibility was demonstrated (Al-Shboul et al, 2013b), it seems that the face and content validity were adequate to ensure that the instrument actually measures what is supposed to be measured. Accordingly, the instrument was given to a jury of two doctors from the education department, five teachers from the language center, and two PhD students in the field of foreign language teaching to review and comment on the layout and the statements.…”

“…This is often true among Jordanian students who learn English as a foreign language. The researcher's observation is that many of the students cannot understand English texts well albeit their efforts in understanding the reading materials (Al-Shboul et al, 2013b). Despite the students' ability in reading English, some anxieties affect their ability, and they find serious difficulties in reading academic English texts.…”

“…The developed instrument was based on the theoretical framework of the current study and the generated themes from the prior work of (Al-Shboul et al, 2013b). The obtained themes and specific statements that gathered from the informants in the previous study were used to create the instrument.…”

“…Therefore, the main purpose of the current article is to propose a theoretical framework that represents the sources of foreign language reading anxiety in order to examine the extent of the sources in the Jordanian EFL context. It is an extended research to the earlier work of (Al-Shboul et al, 2013b).…”

“…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.…”