Too nervous to write? The relationship between anxiety and EFL writing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the students' anxiety in essay writing and their writing performance in EFL context. The subjects were chosen from among 75 Iranian EFL students who took part in TOFEL proficiency test. 27 students majoring in English have been selected. They studied either English translation or English literature. The instruments to collect data were: a) Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) (Cheng, 2004) b) Open - ended questionnaire and c) Writing performance tests. The results suggested that the students felt less nervous in writing when the teacher assured them that their papers will not be scored in contrast to the time when their papers were to be scored by the teacher. In addition, the correlation between final writing test and anxiety were significantly high. The participants' responses to the open-ended questionnaire revealed that during their first stage of writing experience (when the teacher assured them that their papers will not be scored), the students had less physiological and psychological changes than their final test. The results suggested that by taking advantage of the facilitative aspect of anxiety, the students' writing performance will be improved. The study has some pedagogical implications that will be discussed in this paper. © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.