On L2 Learners’ Reading Anxiety—A Case Study On Chinese High School Students

Reading as one of four fundamental language skills plays a significant role in second language learning. Improving students’reading competence has become a primary task for most Chinese teachers of English in senior high schools. Researches both at home and abroad have confirmed that L2 learners’affective factors, especially their attitude and anxiety have a great influence on their reading achievements. However, studies on English reading anxiety among Chinese high school students as well as the causes, degrees and coping strategies are still far from enough.This thesis aims to explore the current situation of Chinese high school students’ English reading anxiety and its correlation with students’reading achievements. And the effective ways to relieve such kind of anxiety. The research participants are 102 senior one students from two parallel classes in Xianju High School. This research lasted for two months and three research instruments including reading tests, questionnaires as well as face-to-face interviews were adopted both at pre-test and post-test.The findings from this study confirm that Chinese high school students do suffer from a certain degree of English reading anxiety and such kind of anxiety is negatively correlated with students’reading competence. Based on the findings, the author then put forward five coping strategies and they were proved to be effective in relieving students’English reading anxiety. The five coping strategies are:1) Strengthening basic knowledge;2) Cultivating critical thinking;3) Creating relaxed reading atmosphere;4) Improving students’self-confidence;5) Reducing tests frequency.This thesis is made up of five chapters. The first chapter presents a general introduction about the research background of reading anxiety, the purpose as well as the significance of this research. The second chapter mainly focuses on the literature review of foreign language reading anxiety. The third chapter describes the research methodology including participants, instruments, research procedures and so on. The fourth chapter as the most important chapter extends the results and discussions of the collected data. The last chapter gives the conclusion and proposals for further researches on English reading anxiety.