The effect of online oral reading on reading comprehension, reading anxiety, and classroom anxiety among EFL learners

Studies have disclosed conflicting evidence on the effect of oral reading (i.e., reading aloud in class) on various language measures. However, with online learning and teaching, personalized activities are employed to develop students' reading comprehension, improve motivation, and minimize anxieties. A qualitative research design was deployed to test the association between reading anxiety and reading proficiency of EFL learners in an online classroom using a correlational research approach to see if there was a correlation between reading anxiety and reading proficiency. Two hundred undergraduate students from a public university in Iraq participated in this study. The experimental group received oral reading intervention for six months in their daily lectures (where they were all invited to read orally before explaining the material), whereas the control group did not. The results revealed a statistically significant difference in the reading comprehension test scores between the group that received the reading intervention program and the one that did not. The novelty of this research is situated in the following three items, which, although replicated in previous studies to a certain extent, have received less to no attention in the literature on online teaching and learning of oral reading and its contributions. First, there is a negative correlation between reading comprehension scores and anxiety measures. Second, reading comprehension scores increased when reading and classroom anxiety decreased. Third, there was also a positive correlation between reading and classroom anxiety that heavily affected the reading comprehension scores of the participants. The teacher's observation suggests that accommodating oral reading in online instruction promotes motivation, rapport, and a conducive classroom climate, affecting reading performance and anxiety measures in an online foreign language classroom.