A Case Study on Elementary CSL Learners’ Reading Anxiety

This paper reports a case study that explores elementary learners’ reading anxiety over Chinese as a second language (CSL). Two elementary CSL learners were chosen as research participants. Lived experience descriptions, think-aloud, retrospective interviews, field observations, and research journal writings were used to investigate the sources of elementary CSL learners’ reading anxiety and the ways employed to reduce their reading anxiety. The data were analyzed by Moustakas’ (1994) data analysis procedures, Creswell’s (2007) three steps, and Bogdon & Biklen’s (1992) data analysis methods. Results show that elementary CSL learners do have reading anxiety in their reading process and the sources of the anxiety include cross-linguistic differences between English and Chinese expressions, lack of previous knowledge, difficult and complex vocabulary, wrong guesses, and comprehension difficulties. Both participants tried to use strategies such as guessing, looking up words, understanding two character words based on the meaning of each character, skipping and keeping reading, and using previous knowledge to predict the rest of the text to reduce their reading anxiety. The present study provides both theoretical and pedagogical implications in the field of CSL reading learning and teaching.