Abstract:
The purposes of this research aimed to 1) investigate the English reading comprehension anxiety of Thai EFL University students, 2) compare the levels of English reading compression anxiety of Thai EFL University students as classified by genders and fields of study ,and 3) ascertain the guidelines to reduce the English reading comprehension anxiety of Thai EFL University students. The samples were from two groups. The former group for quantitative data comprised 344 students in Buriram Rajadhat University who enrolled in English for Academic Purposes 2 in the second semester of 2015 academic year, selected by using the Table of krejcie and Morgan, stratied random sampling, and simple random sampling, resperctively. The latter group for qualitative data included 10 stuents in Buriram Rajabhat University, selected by purposing sampling technique. The research instruments were questionnaire and semi-structured interview. The quantitative data were analyzed by using percentage, mean, standard deviation, independent samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance while the qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis technique. the findings were as follows
1. The English reading comprehension anxiety of Thai EFL university students both in overall and aspect was at a moderate level. The Thai EFL university students feel anxious about their English reading reading comprehension of the text features more than personal factors
2. There were not different of English reading comprehension anxiety of Thai EFL university students classified by genders and fields of study. That is, both male and female as well as different fields of study That EFL university studendents feel anxious when they read the texts for comprehension in the similar way.
3. There were four guidelines or ways to reduce the English reading comprehension anxiety of Thai EFL university students: 1) Looking for the familiar texts to read, 2) Reading the texts repeatedly, 3) Translating the English reading texts into Thai, and 4) Asking the lecturers or friends for explaining the English the reading texts, respectively.