A Study Of English Writing Anxiety And Writing Strategy Choice Of Non-English Majors

In the early 1970 s,the research into approaches and methods in foreign language teaching remained stagnant,which triggered a shift in the research focus from how to teach to how to learn.To figure out how to learn effectively,linguists turned to language learners and attached great importance to individual differences,among which language anxiety and learning strategies are respectively important affective and cognitive variables exerting a great effect on language learning.Writing is an essential language skill that is vital to the success of foreign language learning.English writing,as an output skill,often confronts students with multiple challenges,bringing about students’ feeling of anxiety and even severe avoidance tendency towards English writing.English writing anxiety and writing strategies have aroused enormous attention of numerous English teaching practitioners and linguists for a long time.Nevertheless,the vast majority of the researches tend to pivot on the influence of writing anxiety and writing strategies upon writing proficiency,and few researches probe into the relationship between writing anxiety and writing strategy use.Consequently,on the basis of previous research on writing anxiety and writing strategies,the author makes a tentative study of the effect of writing anxiety on writing strategy use by means of the questionnaire and interview with a view to putting forward some constructive recommendations for the amelioration of non-English majors’ writing proficiency and providing some enlightenment for the teaching of college English writing in China.In this research,147 non-English majors from Chengdu University of Technology are chosen as the subjects.Two questionnaires,including Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory(SLWAI)borrowed from Cheng(2004),and Writing Strategy Questionnaire(WSQ)adopted from Petric and Czarl(2003),along with an individual interview,are employed in the present study to explore students’ English writing anxiety,writing strategy use,and the relationship between the two variables.This research is aimed at probing into the following questions: 1)What is the general situation of writing anxiety of non-English majors? 2)What is the general situation of writing strategy use of non-English majors? 3)Is there any relationship between English writing anxiety and writing strategy choice? 4)Is there any significant difference between the students who experience a relatively higher writing anxiety and those who have a relatively lower writing anxiety in terms of writing strategy use?The findings of the research are revealed as follows: 1)Non-English majors are subjected to English writing anxiety to a medium degree.Avoidance behavior ranks the highest,successively followed by cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety;2)Among the three stages of writing strategies,while-writing strategies are the most frequently employed by non-English majors,with planning strategy use ranking the second and revising strategy use ranking the third;3)Writing anxiety is significantly and negatively correlated with overall writing strategy use.Planning strategies and revising strategies are found to be significantly and negatively correlated with writing anxiety but while-writing strategies show no significant correlation with writing anxiety;4)The frequency of overall writing strategies,planning and revising strategies of low-anxiety group is significantly higher than high-anxiety group but the two anxiety groups display no significant difference in while-writing strategy use.Eventually,in accordance with the findings,the author proposes some pedagogical implications to alleviate non-English majors’ writing anxiety.