A Correlation Study Of Senior High School Students’ Writing Anxiety,Communication Strategies,and English Writing Achievement

Curriculum standards not only put forward higher requirements and standards for middle school students’ English composition ability,but also emphasize the cultivation of middle school students’ learning strategies.Communication strategies as one of learning strategies,it should also be taken seriously.However,after literature reviewing,some conclusions are found.It can be found that there are more studies on communication strategies in oral English than in writing.On the other hand,as one of the affective factors affecting students’ writing,there are few studies on middle school students.For the sake of better guiding English teaching,this study takes 295 senior high school students from No.1 Middle School in Nanchong as the research subjects.In order to answer three questions which are as follows:(1)What is the general situation of senior high school students’ writing anxiety,application of communication strategies in English writing and writing achievement?(2)What are the tendencies or differences of students with different writing proficiency in writing anxiety and the application of communication strategies?(3)What are the correlations among writing anxiety,communication strategies and writing achievement?The quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed in this study,and Cheng’s Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory(SLWAI)in Chinese version,Communication Strategies in English Writing Inventory(CSEWI),Mid-term English examination and interview are the research instruments.The author adopts SPSS 23.0 to analyze the collected data,and make analyses of reliability,descriptive statistics,independent samples T test and Pearson correlation.The results show that:(1)students in senior high school do suffer from writing anxiety and they widely use communication strategies in English writing;(2)there are significant differences on overall writing anxiety,avoidance behavior,cognitive anxiety as well as somatic anxiety between the two groups;there are also significant differences on the application of overall communication strategies,avoidance strategies,compensatory strategies,repetition strategies,empathetic strategies and retrieval strategies between students with high writing proficiency and students with low writing proficiency;(3)there is a significant negative correlation between writing achievement and writing anxiety,and also a significant negative correlation with avoidance behavior,cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety;students’ English writing achievement is positively correlated with the application of overall communication strategies and it is negatively significant correlated with avoidance strategies and literal translation but positively significant correlated with retrieval strategies;writing anxiety has a significant positive correlation with the use of communicative strategies,a significant positive correlation with avoidance strategies,repetition strategies and literal translation,and a significant negative correlation with appeal for assistance and cooperation,and empathetic strategies.On the basis of the findings of this study,there are some pedagogical implications which are put forward that teachers should guide students to pay attention to the use of communication strategies,cultivate strategic awareness,teach students to use communication strategies which have a positive impact on English writing,and attach importance to students’ writing anxiety.By concluding the measures that are beneficial to the teaching of English writing and enabling teachers to pay attention to communicative strategies in English writing,the aim is to assist students reduce their writing anxiety and enhance their awareness of strategies employment and communicative competence.