Writing Apprehension of Black Students at a Private Historically Black Four Year Liberal Arts Institution

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of writing apprehension among first generation students at a Private Historically Black Institution. Participants were 103 college students from the central region of Arkansas at a Private Historically Black Institution of which 103 students responded to the survey completely. All of the respondents were administered the survey in four different sections of the freshman seminar courses. The survey consisted of a demographic section and the Writing Apprehension Test. The writing apprehension test was created by Daly and Miller (1975) to determine an individual's level of writing apprehension. Student's views, opinions or suggestions with regard to alleviating their writing apprehension level are also presented. Scores that range from fifty four to ninety are in the "normal" range. Students in this range do not experience significantly unusual levels of writing apprehension. However the closer the score is to the limit ranges the more apt the student is to experience behaviors or characteristics of the next range of scores. Scores that range from ninety-one to one hundred and twenty-four are in the "low" range. Students in this range experience low levels of writing apprehension and have no fear of writing. In addition, scores that are between twenty and fifty-four are classified as in the "high" range. Students in this range avoid writing as much as possible and experiences sever anxiety. According to the research findings almost 70% or 68.9% of the survey participants experienced "normal" writing apprehension, 10.6% experienced "low" writing apprehension while 20.3% experienced "high" writing apprehension. These findings are supported in the literature, statistical data analysis and themes. Based on the findings, the study presents some recommendations to alleviate this problem.