earticle

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Research on language anxiety to date has centered on the association between anxiety and the oral aspects of language use. Little is known about the relationship between anxiety and reading which plays a substantial role in a foreign/second language curriculum. This paper reports on a study that explored the complex nature of reading anxiety of an advanced-level ESL student. The study revealed that the advanced- level ESL student experienced anxiety when reading in L2 while he did not express general language learning anxiety in a classroom. The student expressed more anxiety in reading comprehension processes than in word decoding processes. His reading anxiety was caused fundamentally by a lack of self-confidence in his L2 reading ability as well as a limited reading time and such factors as the text itself, unfamiliarity of text topics, text lengths, difficult vocabulary, and complicated sentence structures. In order to reduce the levels of reading anxiety, he employed specific reading behaviors such as underlining and taking notes and strategies of skimming, scanning, and re-reading. The findings suggest that L2 reading anxiety may exist as a phenomenon distinguishable from general language learning anxiety for advanced-level ESL students.