مطالب

This paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate the interrelationship of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA)، Reading Proficiency (RP) and Text Feature Awareness (TFA). The aim was to focus on how foreign language reading anxiety and text feature awareness are related and how، in turn، they affect students reading proficiency. That is، it south to determine how these three constructs correlate with each other. This study surveyed and analyzed 74 students from Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. The results indicated that there is no significant relationship between RP and RA، positive significant relationship between RP and TFA and negative significant relationship between TFA and RA. Also results revealed that there is no significant difference between foreign language reading anxiety، reading proficiency and text feature awareness scores of male and female students، as a result; there is no relationship between gender and these three constructs

Generally speaking، lexical items that enter our minds through reading a text commonly leave us with pictures، sounds، echoes، and feelings in the mind. While the ability to produce images in the mind in the process of reading appears to be vital for greater comprehension and recall of texts، research has indicated that many poor readers seemingly do not visualize as they read. On the contrary، those readers who do typically visualize achieve greater comprehension and recall (see Tomlinson، 1997). In this study، in line with Wittrock’s ‘generative learning theory’ (e.g.، 1992)، two fairly homogeneous groups of EFL undergraduates (N=50)، after taking a reading comprehension test to ensure that their reading comprehension differences are not significant، were randomly assigned to attend a short-story course in two different sections—one serving as the experimental and the other as the control group، both studying the same short stories، and both being taught by the researcher as their instructor of the course. The experimental group was instructed how to form pictures in the mind—i.e.، how to visualize—before reading، while reading، and after reading a short story، for example، by being requested to draw pictures of the characters، scenes، or settings in the story as they perceived them. The control group، however، did not receive any training with respect to imagery production and was not told to practice visualization before، while، or after reading the same texts as the experimental group did. The results of a reading comprehension test on the short stories that had been discussed in both indicated that the “visualizers” significantly outperformed the “non-visualizers”، i.e.، the control group، on both tests.