THE REFLECTIVE PAPER

The Reflective Paper

The Reflective Paper

Introduction

The School Program will teach reading to students in one school year or less. Children who learn how to apply phonics knowledge with the ACTION READING program will be able to read fluently and with comprehension. Reading can be taught successfully in the earliest grades to assure a student can spend the rest of his educational years learning other subjects. ESL learners feel anxious when doing reading comprehension tests, "Anxiety is a basic human emotion consisting of fear and uncertainty" (Sarason, 1988). Anxiety has its good and bad sides. On the one hand it helps avoid dangerous events that can be life threatening. On the other hand it causes people to freeze as they avoid non-dangerous situations.

The mind cannot distinguish between what is life threatening or just a stressful situation. "One such event [that causes minds to freeze but is not dangerous] is testing" (Harris & Coy, 2003). Testing is not a dangerous situation. What can be done to trick the mind into believing that testing is not dangerous? "The aim of stress management is to break the link between irrelevant stress reactions (diffused attention, fear, etc.) and academic tasks" (Rubenzer, 1988).

Thesis statement

The relationship between anxiety and academic reading performance on English as a second language comprehension tests. Aim is to research material for an action research on reading comprehension tests. The problem statement of the action research is that ESL students feel anxious when doing reading comprehension tests.

Discission

In order to understand the problem statement that ESL students feel very anxious when doing reading comprehension tests, it is necessary to acquire an understanding of certain terms and their relationships. This paper will discuss in detail the literature on the following terms: Stress and exams, language and ESL anxiety, reading comprehension and foreign language reading anxiety, testing anxiety, stress management relievers, and ways of decreasing anxiety in the foreign and second language classroom.

"Foreign lanugage anxiety and irrational beliefs" (Tittle, 1997) are important issues that need to be considered for a better understanding of what ESL students experience in the ESL classroom. Mathew Tittle claims that ESL students "experience [a kind of] anxiety that is related [to] test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and communication apprehension"(Tittle, 1997, p.1). His studies do not conclusively indicate that there is a correlation between foreign language anxiety and irrational beliefs in learners of foreign languages. There seems to be a correlation when it comes to Russian ESL students.

A similar study was done on ESL language anxiety in Mexican girls by Eleni Pappamihiel (Pappamihiel, 2001).The study concluded that ESL "girls are significantly more anxious about using English in their mainstream classes"(Pappamihiel, 2001). The study used English Language Anxiety Scale based on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale to examine the fears and intimidation ESL students feel when confronted with the option of moving into a larger and higher level classroom. This is a very important point to take into consideration when determining ESL class ...