The Effect of Summarizing and Inferencing Strategies on EFL Learners' Reading Anxiety

Abstract

Reading in a foreign language is anxiety-provoking to some students. This means that increasing students' reading anxiety levels leads to a decrease in students' final grades. The present study aimed to examine the impact of summarizing and inferencing strategies on EFL learners' reading anxiety. The importance of reading strategies was emphasized by many scholars. It seems that inadequate localized attention to a set of effective strategies in reading is among the reasons that contribute to the learners' difficulties in reading comprehension which leads to anxiety. However, even though such need has been felt and recognized, equipping the learners with satisfactory strategies has not been fulfilled, because most of the language teachers neglect them in their teaching process. Therefore, it is necessary to search for useful strategies to increase the level of reading comprehension and lower the level of anxiety in the EFL context. Among the numerous available strategies applicable to reading, the researcher's main focus was on summarizing strategy and inferencing strategy. Being familiar with these strategies and applying them may help students become more strategic in the reading process, promote their reading performance, and lower their reading anxiety.