Exploring Thesis Writing Anxiety And Writing Self-efficacy On English Major Graduates

In the field of education,psychology,and linguistics,affective factors have been a hot topic.Foreign language anxiety in affective variables is often investigated in foreign language teaching.Previous studies have shown that writing anxiety had a negative impact on college students’ writing and non-English major graduates’ thesis writing.Some studies focused on non-English majors about the relationship between writing anxiety and self-efficacy,but the research on English major graduates was fewer.So this study explored writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of graduates majoring in English.Based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis and Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory,this research proposed the following three questions:(1)What is the current situation of thesis writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy among English major graduates?(2)What are the reasons of writing anxiety among English major graduates?(3)What is the correlation between writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy among English major graduates?The participants of this study were 237 English major graduates from 31 universities in China,including second year and third year.The study collected data from three questionnaires and an interview in the written form,including Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory,Research Writing Self-efficacy Index and Causal Factors of English Major Graduates’ Writing Anxiety Inventory.The study yielded the following findings:(1)The overall writing anxiety of graduates majoring in English was moderate.There were statistically significant differences in writing anxiety between grades,and second-year graduates were higher in writing anxiety than the third-year students.Both of the groups were moderate in avoidance behavior,cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety,and avoidance behavior was at the highest level;(2)The overall writing self-efficacy of graduates majoring in English was relatively high.The writing self-efficacy of third-year graduates was higher than that of second year,and the micro-level writing skills was higher than the macro-level skills;(3)As for the English major graduates,the causal factors of writing anxiety can be classified into writing motivation,linguistic knowledge,writing strategy,professional knowledge and external factors.The mean value of writing motivation reached the highest level.There were significant differences in overall casual factors,writing strategy,writing motivation,linguistic and professional knowledge between the two grades;(4)There was a moderate negative correlation between graduates’ writing anxiety and the overall writing self-efficacy and their subscales.The results of the study provide some implications for how to reduce writing anxiety.First,teachers should concern about graduates’ language skills and cultivate their grammar ability.Second,teachers should cultivate students’ positive attitude and enhance their interests toward thesis writing.Third,teachers can enhance thesis writing in curriculum,such as second language academic writing and data statistics.Fourth,graduates should make full use of the resources around them.