Too many students have ‘reading anxiety’. New research suggests it is triggered by problems in primary school

Kindel Media/ Pexels Western Australian author Hamish Kelly has struggled with reading for almost two decades.

In his first of two books, he describes his experience of learning to read: The letters in words were confusing and words often looked the same […] Each year it got harder.

Reading got harder and maths got twice as hard, as maths has lots of reading as well […] By year 5, I was down on myself.

I felt stupid and dumb!! My Mum, Dad, and teachers told me I wasn’t, but I still felt that I was.

There [were] other challenges […] like anxiety and loss of confidence.

What Hamish is describing is reading anxiety.

This involves excessive worries and apprehensions about reading activities.

In the last eight years, there has been a five-fold increase in studies of reading anxiety , as we learn more about this educational challenge.

One of the things we are trying to work out is if reading difficulties cause reading anxiety or if reading anxiety causes reading difficulties.

A new longitudinal study provides some clues.

Read more: Some kids with reading difficulties can also have reading anxiety – what can parents do? What causes what? The results of this study , published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, support the former idea – that reading ability can cause reading anxiety.

This study tested 499 Bulgarian children’s reading ability eight times between grades 1 and 8.

Most of these children (294) were also tested for their reading anxiety in grade 8.

The researchers also considered other factors such as socioeconomic status, working memory (the ability to temporarily hold and manipulate information) and IQ scores.