Sources of L2 writing apprehension: a study of Egyptian university students

Abstract

High levels of apprehension cause students to have writing diffi culties. This study attempted to identify the sources of Egyptian university students' English writing apprehension. The study made use of both quantitative and qualitative data. The scores of 57 students on a writing apprehension scale were compared to their scores on another scale assessing writing self-effi cacy and three linguistic tests measuring English grammar and vocabulary. Additionally, 15 apprehensive students and 16 nonapprehensiv e students were interviewed about their writing experiences and beliefs. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data showed that there are six sources of the students' English writing apprehension: linguistic knowledge level, perceived language competence, writing performance level, perceived writing competence, instructional practices and fear of criticism. These results indicate the integrative nature of L2 writing ability and emphasise the need for dealing with these sources of apprehension. The study recommends that reducing L2 students' writing apprehension should start by improving their linguistic knowledge and writing ability; this will result in bringing about a positive change in their language and writing competence self-perceived beliefs. In addition, the study presents some other recommendations for improving instructional practices of English writing in the Egyptian context. Affect cannot be ignored when talking about writing because it may be a source of students' writing diffi culties. Writers' affect has been used interchangeably with some other terms such as writers' motivation (Boscolo & Hidi, 2007) and writers ' beliefs (Schoonen et al ., 2003). With the increasing recognition that writing diffi culties arise from negative affect, the affective component was included in Hayes' (1996) revision of the Flower-Hayes (1980) writing model. Based on the assumption that 'writing depends on an appropriate combination of cognitive, affective, social and physical conditions if it is to happen at all' (p. 5), Hayes' (1996) revised model conceptualises 'motivation and affect' as a main predictor of writers' performance. In the last three decades, researchers have investigated a variety of affective writing constructs, including writing apprehension, writing self-effi cacy, attitude to writing, writing anxiety and writing outcome expectancy. Of all these constructs, writing apprehension may have been the most heavily researched construct.

Writing Anxiety among Indonesian EFL College Students: Levels, Causes, and Coping Strategies

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“…Some studies investigated the effect of writing anxiety on students; performance. They found similar findings that learners with higher levels of anxiety were likely to perform poorly compared to lower anxiety (Erkan & Saban, 2011, Gibriel, 2017Kurniasih, 2014;Latif, 2015;& Zhang, 2011). As based on those findings, most studies revealed that anxiety is the main negative predictor of students' writing performance.…”

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