Factors Associated with English as a Foreign Language University Students' Writing Anxiety
Researchers have attempted to identify and define the construct of anxiety in foreign language classrooms for many years since English as foreign language (EFL) students are often apprehensive about their ability to successfully communicate in written form. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible relationships between foreign language writing anxiety, gender, year of writing experience, writing self efficacy, and actual writing competence by conducting a chi square test, a two way ANOVA, and MANOVA. A total of 146 juniors majoring in English at a private university in Taiwan voluntarily participated in the research. The results show that students generally appear to be anxious when writing in English; anxiety is quite pervasive in EFL writing classrooms no matter how many years students have learned English writing in the past. Male students who feel more anxious score higher on the writing test than female students. Low anxious students self estimate to have higher writing efficacy and actual writing competence than high apprehensive students. Pedagogical implications for teachers to recognize the existence of students' writing anxiety are presented so as to make a writing class less stressful.