Exploring Reading Comprehension Anxiety and Performance on Reading Comprehension Item Types of Iranian EFL Learners

This article reports a study investigating the existence of any statistically significant correlation between reading anxiety level and L2 learners’ performance on IELTS reading comprehension item types. An initial number of 94 participants (73 females, 21 males) took part in this study. In fact, in order to operationalize reading anxiety, the independent variable of the study, the Persian version of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) was used. Moreover, to provide evidence for the dependent variable of this study, that is, reading comprehension item types, a General Reading Paper of IELTS was employed. To exclude outliers, two box-and-whisker plots were drawn. As a consequence, just two individuals were excluded and the final sample was 92. Based on Pearson product moment correlation, it was found that there was a significant negative correlation between reading anxiety level and performance on IELTS reading comprehension item types including skimming, scanning, classification, table-completion, and true-false .In a nutshell, anxiety as one of the affective factors is significantly correlated with IELTS reading comprehension item types and it is recommended be considered in testing, teaching, and syllabus designing especially in high-stake conditions like IELTS and TOEFL.

Keywords:

Anxiety , Foreign Language Reading Anxiety , Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale , Reading Comprehension Item Types