A Study On The Status Quo And Causes Of Second Language Academic Writing Anxiety Among Postgraduates Of English Majors

In the end of 1970s and early 1980s,an American linguist named Stephen Krashen proposed the "monitor theory",which includes five basic hypotheses.Among the five hypotheses,the affective filter hypothesis assumes that a large number of proper language input can not directly determine a good language proficiency,instead,there are still other obstacles to be overcome,including but not limited to psychological barriers of language learners such as motivation,self-confidence and language anxiety.After the review of related literature,the author discovered that most of the anxiety researches focus on general English while pay less attention to English for Academic Purposes(EAP,hereinafter referred to as EAP).Moreover,the majority of existing English for Special Purpose(ESP,hereinafter referred to as ESP)anxiety researches take non-English majors as subjects,on the contrary,English majors receive far less attention than are needed.Therefore,this thesis seeks to figure out the academic writing anxiety status quo of English major postgraduates by analyzing the affective variables influencing L2 academic writing anxiety.The research purpose is to further demonstrate the truth of Krashen's affective filter hypothesis,and also function as a supplement of research subjects.The research in this paper mainly deals with the following three major questions:1)What's the L2 academic writing anxiety status quo of English major postgraduates?2)What are the causes that contribute to L2 academic writing anxiety that happened in English major postgraduates?3)What's the correlation between L2 academic writing anxiety and motivation?This thesis mainly takes the postgraduate students of Foreign Language College of Guangxi University as research subjects,and the survey is divided into two parts:questionnaire and personal interview.Moreover,the questionnaire is further divided into the following three parts:the first section is "Academic English Anxiety Scale of English Major Postgraduates",formulated by professor Zhong Lanfeng,a revision version from Horwitz's FLCAS(Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale,FLCAS)designed to study foreign language anxiety;the second part is "L2 Academic Writing Anxiety of English Major Postgraduates" formulated by the author under the reference of a series of versions by domestic scholars;the third section is "L2 Academic Writing Motivation Scale of English Major Postgraduates",created by the author in light of the combination of two versions made by both foreign scholars-Gardner and Lambert and domestic scholars-Zhao Jizhu and Li Shoushi respectively.To make a summary,the findings can be elaborated as follows:On one hand,the results have answered the three research questions:1)It can be informed that although there exist higher and lower anxiety levels,most of the subjects rank in the middle of L2 academic writing anxiety,and the anxiety level descends in its four dimensions in the sequence of avoidance behavior,evaluation anxiety,utility anxiety,and conception anxiety;2)the causes of L2 academic writing anxiety can be divided into the following categories:social demographic factor including gender,age and family background,language proficiency and significance character.Furthermore,the multiple linear regression result suggests that of all the relative variables mentioned above,language interest and language proficiency seem to generate the greatest influence on L2 academic writing anxiety.On the other hand,based on the findings of the study,this thesis has elicited some implications to readers in the following three perspectives such as theoretical implications,methodological implications as well as practical implications.