A Study On Writing Anxiety And Writing Self-Efficacy Of The English-major Postgraduate Students

There is an increasing number of researchers paying attention to the affective factors of foreign language learners' language learning in recent years.Anxiety and self-efficacy are two of the most important affective factors that has attracted much attention in previous research on foreign language learning.For the language learners,writing is a very significant skill which is also quite difficult to master.Quite a few researchers have carried out studies to explore the writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of the foreign language learners who are at middle school and tertiary level.However,it should be noted that writing is also important to the postgraduate level students.Thesis writing is an extremely significant and much heavy task for them,which is quite different from the ordinary English writing task of students from other educational levels.Nevertheless,the research on the English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of foreign language learners at graduate level is much scant.In the present study,with a sample of English-major postgraduate students in a normal university in central China,the author aimed to investigate the current situation of the English-major postgraduate students' writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy,and examine the correlation between the students' writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy,and analyze the main causes of the students' writing anxiety and the effective coping strategies.To be specific,this study was guided to answer three research questions as follows:(1)What is the current situation of writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of the English-major postgraduate students?Are there any differences between students with different genders and between students with different undergraduate majors?(2)What is the correlation between the English-major postgraduate students'writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy?(3)What are the main causes of the English-major postgraduate students' writing anxiety?How can we cope with their writing anxiety effectively?To answer these research questions,a multi-method approach was conducted to collect data from different perspectives.At first,two questionnaires,that is,Thesis Writing Anxiety Scale(TWAS)and Thesis Writing Self-Efficacy Scale(TWSS),were used,and a total of 56 responses were analyzed.In addition,the author conducted semi-structured interviews among five of the participants.Findings of this study revealed that the English-major postgraduate students experienced a high level of writing anxiety and a moderate level of writing self-efficacy.There were no statistically significant differences on the writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy between students with different genders or between students with different undergraduate majors.Consistent with the previous research,there was a significantly negative correlation between the students' writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy.As for the main causes of the students' writing anxiety,it was found that poor writing ability,unreasonable time management,poor ability of data analysis,peer pressure,fear of negative evaluation,employment pressure,and anxiety from literature appeared to cause the students' writing anxiety.Ultimately,these main causes were closely related to their writing self-efficacy which was not at a high level.Therefore,the author analyzed the general strategies which could enhance the students' writing self-efficacy and then decrease their writing anxiety from both the teachers' and students'perspectives.The results of the present study contributed to a better understanding of the writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of students at graduate level.Based on the major findings,some pedagogical implications and suggestions on future research were also identified.