Reading Anxiety in Arabic University Students

Reading anxiety measures are newly available in English, but none is available in Arabic. The goals of the present study were to adapt the English Reading Anxiety in College Students (RACS) scale to Arabic-speaking college students (RACS-Arabic), evaluate its reliability and other psychometric properties in comparison to the English US sample, and assess its relation to self-assessments of reading ability and measured reading ability. A sample of 226 undergraduate university Arabic-speaking students completed measures of reading anxiety, general and social anxiety, reading self-concept, perception of reading ability, and reading skills. Results showed the brief 10-item RACS-Arabic demonstrated high reliability. Factor loadings were compared to the original RACS English US sample, suggesting reading anxiety in Arabic to be more about reading out loud in front of people and less about not understanding what is read. Results also indicated that reading anxiety was a significant predictor of reading self-concept and self-perception of reading ability after controlling for general and social anxiety, demonstrating the reading-specific nature of reading anxiety. Unlike the English US sample, which demonstrated small but significant associations between reading anxiety and reading fluency, no significant correlation was observed in this sample between RACS-Arabic and oral vowelized word reading efficiency. Future research is needed to explore the relationship between reading anxiety and different measures of Arabic reading ability.