Investigation on the Relationship between English Reading Comprehension Test Anxiety and Gender of the University Students in Iran

The present paper wan an attempt to discover if there is any significant relationship between Iranian English learners’ reading test anxiety and gender. To this end, ۱۰۰ male and female BA students, passing General English course at Islamic Azad University of Neyshabur –Khorasan e Razavi, were selected to participate in this study. Care was taken to choose the students at the same level of language proficiency to control the intervening variables and increase the validity of the study. They answered a reading test anxiety scale, originally developed by Sarson (۱۹۷۶), measuring the degree of the anxiety in the reading comprehension test. The findings showed that both female and male participants suffered from test anxiety, but the difference between the mean score of both genders’ anxiety was not significant. The findings suggest the importance of focusing on psychological variables as important factors in developing language learning process in language learners.

Keywords:

Reading Comprehension Process , Test Anxiety , Reading Comprehension Test Anxiety