Foreign Language Reading Anxiety and Its Correlation with Reading Test Scores

Anxiety is a common experience among all of us in every daily situation. It is considered one of the affective factors in foreign language learning. Past research has pointed out that foreign language anxiety negatively correlates with academic performance in all four traditional language skills (speaking, listening, writing, and reading). Of all the skills, reading has been once deemed less susceptible to anxiety; however, it has been increasingly gaining more attention from researchers since findings of the pioneers (Saito and the associates) as a phenomenon related to foreign language anxiety. Notwithstanding increasing studies on foreign language reading anxiety, not much has been conducted in Vietnamese contexts, especially the research site. Thus, a survey design was conducted on 207 advanced level students at an educational Vietnamese institution with the aim to explore participants’ reading anxiety level, possible differences between FLRA and demographic variables, and correlation between FLRA and reading test scores. Results revealed that 96.6% of respondents were at a moderate level of reading anxiety. There were no statistically significant differences between FLRA and demographic variables such as gender, birthplace, and English text reading time per week. Similarly, no statistically significant correlation between FLRA and reading test scores could be found. Pedagogical implications were also discussed.