A Study On The Effect Of Senior High School Students’ English Writing Anxiety And Writing Self-efficacy On Their English Writing Achievements

For L2 learners,English writing,as a written language production activity,can reflect the learners’ language ability and thinking ability.However,the English writing performance of many students are in a low level and they find it hard to make progress in English writing,since they have obvious anxiety and are lack of confidence about English writing tasks.English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy are important components of students’ learning emotions.Therefore,it is very necessary to understand the current situation of high school students’ English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy and explore their influential path and extent on English writing.This study,adopting questionnaire survey and statistical analysis and using English writing anxiety scale and self-efficacy scale as the research tools,chose 262 students from six classes of Grade Two in a senior high school in Fuzhou as the research subjects.This study aims to answer 3 questions: 1)What is the level of senior high school students’ English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy? 2)What is the correlation among senior high school students’ English writing anxiety,writing self-efficacy and English writing achievements? 3)How does English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy impact their English writing achievements?Based on the data statistics,the results are shown as follows: 1)Their overall English writing anxiety of senior high school students is at a medium level(m=2.97),of which the avoidance behavior reaches the high level(m=3.73).Their overall writing self-efficacy is at a low level(m=2.37),of which the writing task efficacy(m=2.49)is slightly higher than writing skill efficacy(m=2.30).2)There is a significant correlation among senior high school students’ English writing anxiety,writing self-efficacy and English writing achievements.And there is a significant negative correlation between English writing anxiety and English writing achievements(R=-0.433,P<0.05).Besides,there is a significant positive correlation between writing self-efficacy and English writing achievements(R=0.498,P<0.05).Furthermore,there is a significant negative correlation between English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy(R=-0.489,P<0.05).3)English writing anxiety can predict 18.7% of English writing achievements,and writing self-efficacy 24.8%.Once a mediation model is established,the direct effect of English writing anxiety on English writing achievements is 0.077(P>0.05),and the indirect effect of English writing anxiety on it is 0.0388(P<0.05).It shows that writing self-efficacy plays an important role in the relationship between English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy.That is to say,when the mediating variable of writing self-efficacy is added,English writing anxiety can influence indirectly English writing achievements by the mediation of writing self-efficacy.Based on the results,the author proposes several practical teaching suggestions on the improvement of English writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy.The teacher are due to take more personalized measures of encouragement and give more tolerance to the errors which appear in students’ compositions,so as to alleviate the writing anxiety of students.In addition,it is necessary for teachers to change their teaching mode and evaluation method to improve their writing self-efficacy.