An Investigation Of ERPP Writing Anxiety:Data From Non-English Major Graduate Students

In the presence of higher education internationalization and economic globalization,engaging researchers into international academic dialogues via academic articles has become a task crucial to the scientific as well as foreign language advancement of non-English speaking countries.With the entrance into the 21 st century,a series of initiatives have indicated Chinese government's determination in implementing the academic globalization strategy.According to the National Program for Medium-and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development(2010-2020),universities should cultivate a large number of talents with international vision,good command of international laws and competitive edge in international affairs.It has become a practical long-term goal for graduate students to be able to read and publish academic English papers in international refereed journals.Despite a few studies on Chinese non-English major graduates' English learning,graduate students' perceptions of their academic English writing and publishing practice remain largely unexplored.Therefore,the main focus of this study was to operationalize and quantify the ERPP writing anxiety among non-English major graduate students.The research questions are as follows:(1)Is ERPP writing anxiety a single or multidimensional construct? What is the underlying structure of ERPP writing anxiety?(2)What is the general trend of non-English major graduate students' ERPP writing anxiety?(3)To what degrees do gender and discipline affect non-English major graduate students' ERPP writing anxiety?For this end,the author generated an initial item pool of the ERPP Writing Anxiety Scale based on careful analysis of existing literature as well as interviews.Data from the initial piloting and the final piloting were processed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS)16.0.Scientific questionnaire development principles were strictly applied to the developing and validation procedures.The structure and items of the final scale were determined based on exploratory factor analysis,item analysis,and item revision.The results indicate that the ERPPWAS has good reliability and validity.Accordingly,it can be used asan effective measure to assess graduate students' ERPP writing anxiety.Afterwards,quantitative data from the final piloting were processed through descriptive analyses,independent samples t test,and one-way ANOVA.In addition,six participants were invited for interviews based on the results of the final survey.The findings suggest that the ERPP writing anxiety is a multidimensional construct distinguished from general types of second language anxiety related to writing.The ERPP writing anxiety comprises four components: The Inner Reserve Anxiety,the External Constraint Anxiety,Language Related Anxiety,and Avoidance Behavior.Besides,graduate students in this study were confronted with high level ERPP writing anxiety,with the mean scores for the overall scale and subscales all above the mid-point.In terms of the influences of background variables,male and female graduate students in the study had similar levels of Language Related Anxiety.Yet they differed significantly in the Inner Reserve Anxiety,with the latter group scoring significantly higher than the former.Further,disciplinary area was a significant factor affecting ERPP writing anxiety as there were significant disciplinary differences in the scores of ERPP writing anxiety,Inner Reserve Anxiety,and Avoidance Behavior.Regarding the overall scale and the abovementioned two dimensions,the mean score of graduate students from Agricultural Sciences was secondary to that of participants from Humanities and Social Sciences,and that of graduate students from Natural Sciences the lowest of all.