Foreign Language Reading Anxiety and its Correlation with Topic Familiarity

Anxiety, one of the affective factors, has drawn much attention from foreign language researchers. It has been proved to affect not only oral language performance but also receptive skills like reading. Various research has been conducted on speaking and listening skills, but not very much has evaluated anxiety on reading skills including the present research site. With the aim to include the local research site to the existing literature, a quantitative study on foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) was conducted at a Vietnamese educational institution. The current study aims to detect English reading anxiety level of students and assess its correlation with topic familiarity scores. Results revealed 96.7% of respondents at a moderate level of reading anxiety and a strong negative relationship between familiarity with text topics and worry about text understanding, lack of confidence in reading, and cultural understanding.