Foreign Language Reading Anxiety In A Jordanian EFL Context

The study aims to explore the sources of foreign language reading anxiety at Yarmouk University, Jordan. It is a study of two consecutive phases. The first phase is a qualitative exploration of the sources for which interviews and diaries were collected from six informants with different levels of English language proficiency. The second, is a quantitative phase that followed up on the qualitative phase for the purpose of expanding and generalizing the results of the generated themes. In the quantitative phase, a cross-sectional survey of 1500 number of undergraduate students who were taking Basic English courses was administered. A total of 1006 questionnaires was valid for analysis. However, only 408 questionnaires were randomly chosen according to the criteria of quota sampling techniques. The findings revealed that there were two aspects of foreign language reading anxiety: personal factor and text feature. Under the personal factor there were two main sources which are afraid of making errors and worry about reading effects. On the other hand, there were three main sources sources under the text feature which are unknown vocabulary, unfamiliar topic, and unfamiliar culture.