Correlative Study On Students' English Writing Anxiety And Strategy Use In Senior High School

Writing in English is important in language education as its acquisition involves not only a practice and knowledge of language skills including listening,reading and speaking,but also mastering of other skills such as meta-cognitive skills.Previous studies show that L2 English learners often experience writing anxiety when they are required to write in English,and that appropriate use of L2 writing strategies are essential for students attempting to master composition goals.In the present study,the author sets out to explore the condition of high school students' English writing anxiety and strategy use,and investigate the correlation between writing anxiety and strategy use.This paper is proposed to answer the three research questions below:(1)What is the current status of writing anxiety for high school students?(2)Which writing strategies do high school students employ?(3)Is there a correlation between students' writing anxiety and writing strategy use?A total of 120 students in a senior high school in Inner Mongolia took part in this study.They finished two questionnaires: the questionnaire on writing anxiety and the questionnaire on writing strategy.Four students participated in the follow-up interviews.Descriptive statistics,Bartlett test and Pearson correlation coefficient as well as multivariable linear regression model in SPSS software were used to analyze and discuss the data results.The results are as follows:(1)the writing anxiety of senior high school students is generally at the middle level.The order of anxiety from high to low is avoidance behavior,cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety.Among them,avoidance behavior reaches high level of anxiety.(2)The overall use of English writing strategies for senior high school students is at medium frequency.The frequency of strategy use from high to low is self-regulation strategy,affective strategy,cognitive strategy,meta-cognitive strategy and social strategy.(3)There is a significant negative correlation between English writing anxiety and the overall use of writing strategies,and most of them havedifferent degrees of negative correlation between writing anxiety and writing strategies.Based on the above results,this study put forward some suggestions on English writing teaching in senior high school from two aspects: alleviating English writing anxiety and strengthening the cultivation of writing strategies,including improving students' interest and strengthening students' confidence in English writing,increasing the impart of writing strategies and cultivating students' cooperative ability.