EFL Students’ Writing Anxiety in Online Learning Environment during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Research on writing anxiety has been widely done in an offline setting for many years. The results informed that students were at various levels of writing anxiety. Due to the global pandemic, language classrooms have been shifted into emergency remote learning. It is susceptible that students also experience writing anxiety in an online learning environment. This study investigates the students’ writing anxiety in an online setting. More specifically, it investigates the the levels and types of writing anxiety across gender. This study involved 215 EFL students from three universities in Indonesia. The SLWAI questionnaire was distributed via Google. The obtained data were analyzed using an independent sample t-test to figure out the difference and levels and types of writing anxiety across gender. The findings showed that EFL students experience writing anxiety in an online setting. The results showed that both groups had moderate anxiety levels. Female students’ average score (63.81) was slightly higher than male students (62.01). Statistical analysis showed that no statistical difference was observed in levels of anxiety across gender. In addition, male and female students experienced somatic anxiety, cognitive, and avoidance behavior. Cognitive anxiety and avoidance behavior anxiety were at moderate levels; however, the two groups experienced higher somatic anxiety in online writing activities. This indicates that students had unpleasant feelings as a result of the anxiety experienced