Foreign Language Reading Anxiety YOSHIKO SAITO Institute for World Languages and Cultures 100 Campus Center California State University, Monterey Bay Seaside, CA 93955 Email: ysa@monterey.edu THOMAS J. GARZA Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures P.O. Box 7217 University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78713 Email: tjgarza@mail.utexas.edu ELAINE K. HORWITZ Foreign Language Education SZB 528 University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 Email: horwitz@mail.utexas.edu Whereas most discussions of foreign language (FL) anxiety have centered on the difficulties caused by anxiety with respect to oral performance, this article discusses the possibility of anxiety in response to foreign or second language reading. It introduces the construct of FL reading anxiety, offers a scale for its measurement, and reports on a preliminary study of reading anxiety in 30 intact first-semester classes of Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. The study found that contrary to previous teacher intuitions, reading in a FL can be anxiety provoking to some students. Whereas general FL anxiety has been found to be independent of target language, levels of reading anxiety were found to vary by target language and seem to be related to the specific writing systems. In addition, students’ reading anxiety levels increased with their perceptions of the difficulty of reading in their FL, and their grades decreased in conjunction with their levels of reading anxiety and general FL anxiety. FOR SOME TIME, FOREIGN LANGUAGE (FL) educators have recognized the existence of FL anxiety and its potential for significant interfer- ence with language learning and production. In 1986, Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope defined FL anxiety as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to class- room language learning arising from the unique- ness of the language learning process” (p. 128). The essence of FL anxiety, according to Horwitz et al., is the threat to an individual’s self-concept caused by the inherent limitations of communi- cating in an imperfectly mastered second lan- guage. From this perspective, FL anxiety is most clearly associated with the oral aspects of lan- guage use: listening and speaking. Indeed, most discussions of FL anxiety have centered on the difficulties caused by anxiety with respect to oral performance in the FL classroom (Aida, 1994; Horwitz et al., 1986; Koch & Terrell, 1991; Phil- lips, 1992; Price, 1991; Young, 1991) and the pri- mary instrument used to study FL anxiety, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), includes 20 of 33 items that focus on listening and speaking a FL. At first glance, reading would seem to be the component of FL performance least susceptible to anxiety effects. Unlike speaking a FL, read- ing—at least silent reading—is done privately with unlimited opportunity for reflection and re- consideration. Reading is also an individual act in that the “success” of the reading does not depend on a dynamic construction of meaning by two or more speakers, whereas a speaker interacting with an uncooperative or incompetent conversa- tional partner is going to have difficulty even if he or she is a very competent and sensitive conversa- tional participant. 1 Two aspects of FL reading would seem, how- ever, to have great potential for eliciting anxiety: The Modern Language Journal, 83, ii, (1999) 0026-7902/99/202–218 $1.50/0 ©1999 The Modern Language Journal