Farnoosh Karimi - Ph.D. Candidate, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
Zohreh Nafissi - Assistance Professor, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

This article sets out to examine the effect of utilizing different culturally-based materials on EFL university students foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency within project-based classes. The research was carried out with two classes of intermediate freshmen majoring in English Language Teaching. The comparison group had to present their projects based on the reading passages of the book Active (L2 culturally-oriented texts) and the experimental group had to deliver their projects based on their L1 and L2 culturally-based reading texts designed by the researcher. Reading comprehension self-efficacy scale, foreign language reading anxiety scale, and the reading section of the Michigan Test (1998) were administered to students as pre-tests and posttests at the beginning and at the end of one academic year consisting of two projectbased reading courses. ANCOVA was utilized for analyzing the data. The results indicated that although in both groups significant improvements were observed regarding the three aforementioned variables, it was the experimental group that showed significantly less degrees of anxiety, compared to the comparison group. However, no differences regarding reading self-efficacy and reading proficiency were observed between the two groups. The findings of this study suggest that EFL teachers, material developers and syllabus designers can take advantage of cultural familiar texts when generating their own learning materials.

culturally-oriented texts, foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, reading proficiency, project-based learning