Özet:

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between reading anxiety and the reading errors of Syrian students learning Turkish as a foreign language. The study employed the survey model. The study was carried out with 59 Syrian students at TOMER Department of Mustafa Kemal University who were learning Turkish as a foreign language. The instruments used in this endeavor were the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale developed by Saito, Horwitz and Garza, the reading errors form developed by the researchers, as well as camera recordings and reading texts. According to the results obtained from the research, 16.9% of the students (N=10) had low levels of reading anxiety, while 59.3% (N=35) had medium levels and 23.7% (N=14) suffered high levels of such anxiety. The students who had low, medium and high levels of reading anxiety respectively accounted for 14.8% (N=1129), 61.2% (N=4657), and 23.8% (N= 1812) of all reading errors committed. The average number of errors per student at the low level of reading anxiety level was 112.3, while those with medium levels of anxiety made 132.6 mistakes, and the ones with high levels of anxiety made 129. Another finding of the study is that the most common errors committed by the students of all reading anxiety levels were related to pronunciation, repetition and spelling. On the other hand, pauses, following with a finger, and the distance between the text and the eye, were the least common types of errors.