English Foreign Language Reading Anxiety and Reading Strategies: A Positive or Negative Correlation?

Anxiety, an affective factor, is pivotal in language learners’ success or failure. Findings pointed to its correlation with oral performance, test results, and language skills, namely listening and writing, but only a little with reading. At the current research site, a Vietnamese context, very little evaluation on reading anxiety in English foreign language learning could be found. Therefore, this investigation aimed to explore learners’ English foreign language reading anxiety levels, reading techniques used, and the correlation between foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading strategies (RS). A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 324 university students (including 152 females and 172 males) in a private educational Vietnamese context with two main data-gathering instruments: the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS) and Survey of Reading Strategies (SORS). Results revealed a moderate level of reading anxiety among 68.5% of respondents, while 31.4% had hi- and lo-anxiety levels with the same percentage of 15.7% each. Regarding reading techniques, Problem-Solving Strategies were found to be the most favorable, and those with lo-anxiety used strategic reading more regularly than the others (hi- and mid-anxiety level groups). When it comes to the correlation between FLRA and RS, a statistically negative correlation was found. It means FLRA could decrease when RS increases. Additionally, FLRA was negatively correlated with three RS subscales. Based on the findings, several pedagogical implications were also discussed.