Effects of Explicit Reading Strategy
Instruction on EFL Learners’
Reading Anxiety
Researcher: 李秋美
Advisor: 鍾榮富 教授
Reporter: 哀宛君 Judy Ai
(NA2C0013)
Introduction
Background and Motivation
Purposes of the Study
Research Questions
Significance of the Study
Limitations of the Study
Definition of Terms
Background and Motivation-1
Reading is supposed to be a very pleasant leisure activity;
however, some students reported experiencing anxiety and
fear while they were left to confront lengthy articles and
required to answer relevant reading questions.
Grammar-translation approach is still a dominant teaching
method in the English learning settings of Taiwan ( Chen,
2005). There is little time for the teaching of reading
strategies to enhance students’ reading comprehension.
As Krashen (1982) proposed in his affective filter hypothesis,
the learners’ emotional state is the main factor which would
form an affective filter to block away input data. Moreover, he
suggested that mental block and uneasy feelings could
disturb a second language acquisition process.
Background and Motivation-2
Among the four skills, listening and speaking are most
associated with foreign language anxiety; however, reading is
the most important skill that students should master due to
the test-oriented English learning context of Taiwan.
It is a pity that no recent research with a focus on reading
anxiety took senior high school students as participants.
Therefore, much room is left for further investigation into
reading anxiety of EFL senior high students. (niche )
With respect to making reading less stressful, strategyoriented approach to reading is among one of the techniques
proposed by Horwitz (1986) to help “allay students’ anxiety”
(p.35). Kern (1988) also suggested incorporating explicit
strategy instruction into FL learning.
Background and Motivation-3
Tierney, Readence and Dishner (1995) described, through
the explicit teaching of reading comprehension, students
could develop their reading comprehension skills and
strategies that could be applied to other reading situations
without teacher support.
In Taiwan, several studies were conducted to explore the
effects of reading strategy instruction at all school levels.
However, none of the above studies aimed to investigate how
students’ reading anxiety was influenced or reduced by
explicit comprehension instruction. (niche )
The researcher feels motivated to explore the factors affecting
students’ reading anxiety, and the practicability and
effectiveness of incorporating explicit comprehension
instruction into the regular English class.
Purposes of the Study
To investigate the causes of EFL senior high school first-graders’
reading anxiety
To examine the effects of the explicit instruction of reading
strategies on their reading anxiety and reading comprehension
To find out whether the strategy instruction is effective in
improving students’ ability to answer different patterns of multichoice reading questions
To explore students’ acquisition and adoption of those reading
strategies and their responses to the reading strategy training
Research Questions
What are the major causes of EFL senior high school students’
reading anxiety?
Does the explicit strategy instruction reduce EFL senior high
school students’ reading anxiety?
Does the explicit strategy instruction facilitate EFL senior high
school students’ reading ability, including identifying main
ideas, searching for detailed information, drawing logical
inferences and deriving contextual meanings of unfamiliar
words?
What are EFL senior high school students’ responses to the
explicit strategy instruction?
Significance of the Study-for teachers
They may have a deeper understanding of students’ reading
anxiety and problems, and therefore feel motivated to make a
change or an adjustment in their reading instruction.
They may consider the possibility of incorporating the explicit
instruction of reading strategies in the their reading instruction
programs to help students read with less anxiety and more
efficiency.
They can examine whether students are able to apply their
acquired strategies to reading comprehension tests.
They can gain a clear understanding of students’ responses to
the strategy training and students’ attitudes toward English
reading after the intervention.
Significance of the Study-for students
~ especially for those who have long been struggling
with unpleasant English reading experience ~
The instruction can inform them of the existence and
application of reading strategies.
The instruction can encourage them to
independently make flexible use of the acquired
strategies in reading tests or real reading situations.
Limitations of the Study
Since the subjects involved in this study are only 84 male
freshman students at a senior high school in southern
Taiwan, the generalization of this study is limited.
Only five reading strategies are chosen for the experiment due
to the time limit of 15 weeks. Therefore, students’ knowledge
and application of other reading strategies are not investigated.
Due to the short period of training time, students’ retentive use
of the instructed strategies in their reading processes over a
longer period of time is not further explored. Consequently,
the long-term effectiveness cannot be determined.
The assessments of students’ reading proficiency are
restricted to multiple-choice questions. Thus, students’ overall
reading comprehension can not be tested with multiple
instruments.
Definition of Terms-1
Foreign language anxiety
Horrwitz et al. (1986) defined foreign language anxiety as “a
distinct complex of self-perception, belief, feelings, and
behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from
the uniqueness of the language learning process”
Foreign language reading anxiety
It is defined as any discomfort or fear accompanied by reading
foreign texts during reading process or in a testing condition.
Definition of Terms-2
Explicit comprehension instruction
It refers to the instruction of reading strategies in an explicit:
(Beckman, 2002)
Describing the strategy and its purpose
Modeling its use and explaining to the students how to perform it
Providing ample assisted practice time
－ monitoring, providing clues, and giving feedback
Promoting student self-monitoring and evaluation of personal
strategy use
Encouraging continued use and generalization of the strategy in
independent learning situations
Definition of Terms-3
Top-down processing
In top-down processing, readers use background knowledge to
make predictions, and then search the text to confirm or reject
the predictions that were made. They begin with meaning and
then move down to words (Ko, 2004)
Bottom-up processing
The bottom-up processing consists of lower-level reading
processes －letters, letter clusters, words, phrases, sentences,
longer text, and finally meaning. (Anderson, 2003)
Interactive processing
The readers continually shifted from one focus to another in the
process of reading, adopting a top-down approach to predict the
probable meaning, then moving to the bottom-up approach to
verify whether the prediction was what the writer meant.
Literature Review
Affective Variables in Foreign Language Learning
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety
Reading Strategies
Explicit Comprehension Instruction
Affective Variables in Foreign Language Learning-1
Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashen,1982)
According to Krashen, emotions act as a filter that controls whether
language is allowed to flow into the language-learning system in the
brain. The best acquisition would occur in contexts where the affective
filter was low. When the learner was anxious and lacked self-confidence,
the filter was up and the acquisition or comprehension would be reduced.
However, he commented, “There is something called facilitative anxiety.
My hypothesis is that facilitative anxiety has a positive effect on language
learning.
Affective Variables in Foreign Language Learning-2
Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwita,1986)
Horwitz developed FLCAS in an effort to identify and measure the concept
of foreign language. There are three major components of foreign language
anxiety in the scale.
Communication apprehension
A type of shyness
characterized by fear
of or anxiety about
communicating with
people
negative evaluation
The worry about others’
evaluation, the tendency to
avoid evaluative situations,
and the expected feelings of
others’ negative evaluation
test anxiety
A type of performance
anxiety stemming from a fear
of failure and it is concerned
with apprehension over
academic evaluation
Affective Variables in Foreign Language Learning-3
Foreign Language Anxiety in 3-stage Model of Learning (Tobias,1979)
Input
Anxiety acts like a
filter preventing
some information
from getting into
the cognitive
processing system.
Processing
Anxiety acts as a
distraction,
disabling students
to learn new
words, phrases,
grammar, and so
on.
Output
Anxiety can
influence the quality
of second language
communication.
The effect can be
observed when
speaking or writing.
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety-1
Saito, Garza and Horwitz (1999) introduced the construct of foreign
language reading anxiety. The conducted a study to investigate foreign
language reading anxiety among foreign language students.
◎ Participants－ 383 university students who enrolled in first semester
course of French, Japanese and Russian
◎ Instruments－ Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz,1986)
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) (Saito,1999)
The study found that reading in FL can be anxiety provoking to
some students. They also provided the existence of foreign
language reading anxiety as a phenomenon related to but
distinguished from general foreign language anxiety.
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety-2
Unfamiliar Linguistic Features
Unfamiliar Cultural Materials
Lack of Sufficient Prior
Knowledge
Sources of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety
Limited Reading Proficiency
Low Self-Efficacy
Misconceptions about Reading
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety-3
 Unfamiliar Linguistic Features－ Linguistic features, including foreign writing
systems, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, arouse immediate reading anxiety.
 Unfamiliar Cultural Materials－ Anxiety is also anticipated when a reader realizes that
the words he or she decoded do not constitute a comprehensible or logical message
entity because of incomplete knowledge of the cultural materials underlying the text.
 Lack of Sufficient Prior Knowledge－ Readers comprehend something new by relating
it to the past experience, background knowledge, or more technically －schemata.
 Limited Reading Proficiency－ Frustration and uneasiness are associated with anxiety;
accordingly, it is anticipated that anxiety may occur when readers try to make
meanings out of the passage but failed.
 Low Self-Efficacy－ Self-efficacy can be generally defined as pesonal beliefs in one’s
capabilities. Much of the language learners’ anxiety comes from the threat to the
learners’ self-concept of competence.
Foreign Language Reading Anxiety-4
 Misconceptions about Reading－ Lee (1999) hypothesized that misconceptions about
reading can lead to learner anxiety.
Successful reading equals answering comprehension questions.
Reading is a private act that takes place outside the classroom by an
isolated reader.
Reading is a linear process that begins with the first word on the page
and proceeds directly to the last word on the page.
Comprehension is an absolute.