• Ebrahim Zangani

  Author

This paper attempted to uncover the relationship between Generalized Anxiety
Disorder (GAD) and reading comprehension performance in English as a foreign language.
GAD as a psychiatric disorder affects the students’ performance in language learning in general
and in reading comprehension in particular. Participants of the study who were 141 male and
female high school students in Zanjan were asked to respond GAD-7 self-report scale and a
reading comprehension test. The results of the statistical analyses of data indicated that there is
a significant negative relationship between GAD and reading comprehension performance.
Between GAD and gender no relation or difference was found, though. GAD in males correlated
negatively, but insignificantly and in females significantly and negatively with their performance
in reading comprehension. The results also showed that GAD can influence the students’
performance in reading comprehension. Moreover, the subjects were divided into four groups in
terms of anxiety and their performances compared with reading comprehension and a significant
difference was observed among the means. Nevertheless, no groups were found to be statistically
different from the rest. Accordingly, it was concluded that cognitive and medical therapies can
be applied to students with GAD, but first various sources of anxiety in language classes should
be identified and minimized.

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