"Anxiety is a basic human emotion consisting of fear and uncertainty" (Sarason, 1988). Anxiety has its good and bad sides. On the one hand it helps avoid dangerous events that can be life threatening. On the other hand it causes people to freeze as they avoid non-dangerous situations. The mind cannot distinguish between what is life threatening or just a stressful situation. "One such event [that causes minds to freeze but is not dangerous] is testing" (Harris & Coy, 2003). Testing is not a dangerous situation. What can be done to trick the mind into believing that testing is not dangerous? "The aim of stress management is to break the link between irrelevant stress reactions (diffused attention, fear, etc.) and academic tasks" (Rubenzer, 1988). This research review will explain the relationship between anxiety and academic reading performance on English as a second language comprehension tests. The writer 's aim is to research material for an action research on reading comprehension tests. The problem statement of the action research is that ESL students feel anxious when doing reading comprehension tests. The solution proposed is to use stress relievers to trick the mind into believing there is no danger. ESL students will be taught stress management to relieve anxiety when doing reading comprehension tests. It is believed that once students are relaxed they will be able to perform better.
In order to understand the problem statement that ESL students feel very anxious when doing reading comprehension tests, it is necessary to acquire an understanding of certain terms and their relationships. This paper will discuss in detail the literature on the following terms: Stress and exams, language and ESL anxiety, reading comprehension and foreign language reading anxiety, testing anxiety, stress management relievers, and ways of decreasing anxiety in the foreign and second language classroom. "Foreign language
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