The effect of test conditions on foreign language reading anxiety

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K12472
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Chubu University
• Principal Investigator: MIKAMI Hitoshi 中部大学, 人文学部, 講師 (90770008)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 外国語読解不安 / テスト不安 / テスト条件 / 外国語読解テスト

Outline of Final Research Achievements

(a) The first study discusses the interchangeability of three self-report measures for reading anxiety. Despite their differences in target constructs, the three scales have been used for similar lines of research. The author reaches the conclusion that the scales are non-interchangeable with one another.
(b) While foreign language (FL) reading anxiety (FLRA) has been treated as a unique construct, the possibility that FLRA is only a subset of the test anxiety (TA) construct has long been ignored. The second study was done to obtain a clear picture on this topic. The test results confirmed the independence of FLRA from TA.
(c) The most intriguing result of the third study was that the majority of the participants had experienced anxiety in situations where they lacked an effective strategy to solve given reading tasks.

Free Research Field

応用言語学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

概要にある課題①は，不安とテスト成績の関係性が，使用する尺度次第で変化する可能性を示している。課題②は，読解不安とテスト不安が異なる構成概念である場合，外国語読解研究における不安の捉え方を再考する必要があることを示している。また，読解テストは外国語の熟達度判定に広く用いられるにも関わらず，テストのどのような性質が不安と読解成績の間に体系的な負の関係をもたらすのかは，これまで中心的な問題として扱われてこなかった。以上の理由から，本研究は，不安とFL読解テスト成績の関係を検証する上で重要性の高い課題①～③の解決を目指すこととした。