Investigation of Students’ Reading Anxiety with Regards to Some Variables

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine students’ views on reading anxiety with regards to variables of gender and grade levels of the students and socio-economic level of the schools. To this end, Melanlioglu’s (2014) “Reading Anxiety Scale”, a 5 point likert scale consisting of 14 questions, was used.  The scale consists of following sub-dimensions: planning of reading process, factors supporting reading, reading comprehension and analysis. The universe for the study consists of middle school students in a city center in Central Anatolia Region in Turkey. The results of the study indicate that students “sometimes” had anxiety in reading comprehension and analysis sub-dimensions while they “rarely” had anxiety in the sub-dimensions of planning reading process and factors supporting reading. There was no significant difference with regards to the gender variable in the sub-dimension of factors supporting reading whereas there was a significant difference in favor of males in the sub-dimensions of planning of reading process and reading comprehension and analysis.  With regards to the socio-economic level of the school variable, it was observed that students from lower to middle class schools had higher levels of anxiety in the sub-dimensions of factors supporting reading, reading comprehension and analysis compared to students from upper class schools. The study also indicated that students’ reading anxiety increased as they moved from one class to another.