Investigating the Effects of Pre - reading Activities on Reading Anxiety and Reading Comprehension on EFL learners; A Case of Play VS. Video

Over the past two decades, researchers have been hard at work trying to investigate different approaches that might help with reading anxiety and readingcomprehension. In their efforts, researchers have pointed out to the impact of visualizations, from simple pictures to complex animated videos, and their relation with both reading anxiety and reading comprehension. Pre-reading activities also constitute a realm that has always been the subject of probing. Its impact on stimulating background knowledge before the start of reading has been investigated. This study aimed at comparing two pre-reading activities, namely plays and animations, and establish whether each one is more successful than the other with respect to reading anxiety and reading comprehension. ۱۰۱ Iranian male ۱۲th graders from the city of Tehran, Iran, were put into two groups. The Play Group consisted of ۴۹ and the Animation Group ۵۲ participants. Before the beginning of the study, both groups took a KET reading test and the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale.Throughout the study, each group received ۵ plays and ۵ animations before the beginning of their textbook and workbook reading activities as their treatments. At the end of the study, KET reading tests and FLRAS were again administered. Data obtained were analyzed through one-way analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of covariance. Plays and animations were found to have no difference when it comes to reading anxiety. On the other hand, participants of the Play Group showed marginal trend of improvement in their reading comprehension scores