Foreign Language Teacher Trainees' Reading Attitudes

Abstract

English, French, and German foreign language teacher trainees' reading attitudes in both their native language and a foreign language were investigated in terms of their feelings of anxiety within the subdimensions of comfort, self-perception, self-concept, and value. The grade point average scores of the teacher trainees were also considered in order to investigate whether or not these had an influential role on foreign language reading attitude. Foreign language teacher trainees enrolled at a university in Turkey completed 230 valid questionnaires. Results indicated that the teacher trainees were more anxious while reading in a foreign language compared to their native language.

An Empirical Analysis of the Relationship between Foreign Language Reading Anxiety and Reading Strategy Training

“…Despite the simplistic conception that it does not necessarily require active participation and thus, is less anxiety-provoking, FL reading proves to be correlated with anxiety. Apparently, FL reading stimulates higher levels of anxiety compared to reading in L1 as several additional factors like language proficiency, cultural unfamiliarity and motivation interfere with the reading process (Kartal, 2011;Sellers, 2000). Based on the bulk of research favoring for teaching reading strategies in FL classrooms, one can readily assume that providing learners with training on reading strategies may facilitate comprehension of reading texts and thus, help learners cope with anxiety associated with FL reading.…”

“…Nonetheless, Brantmeier (2005), in a study conducted with 92 advanced level learners of Spanish, reports that with the highly proficient learners, it is the nature of language classroom rather than reading tasks that aggravate learners' anxiety levels. Finally, much research (Kartal, 2011;Matsuda & Gobel, 2004) reveals that gender is not a factor affecting FLRA levels because no significant difference between males and females regarding their FLRA levels has been reported so far. Now that FLRA is aggravated by difficulties in comprehending FL texts (Sellers, 2000), one can assume that reading strategies may make a facilitative difference in learners FL reading abilities.…”

L1 and L2 Reading Attitudes and Their Contribution Toward Reading Habit

“…Briggs and Walter (2016) and Onwuegbuzie et al (2010) mention that student autonomy and their willingness to work collaboratively with other people became predictors of reading attitude. Kartal (2011) found that some L2 learners felt that they were not able to perform well in L2 reading, which leads to learners having a negative attitude toward reading. On the other side, Martinez et al (2008) also found that internal factor such as age does not influence reading attitude.…”