A Study of the Causes and the Effect of Writing Anxiety Components on Iraqi EFL Students’ Attitudes

Abstract

Anxiety is identified as a main issue that may highly lead to the feelings of nervousness, worry, tension, and apprehension. The purpose of the study is to measure the impact of the three components of writing anxiety (somatic, avoidance behavior, and cognitive) on Iraqi EFL learners’ attitudes and also attempts to determine the component causing the highest anxiety rates. Besides, the study also aims to detect the key elements that provoke anxiety. Two questionnaire tools, listed under the quantitative approach, were adopted in this study: The Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory developed by Cheng and Causes of Writing Anxiety Inventory developed by Rezaei and Jafari. Hundred Iraqi undergraduate students, 50 males and 50 females, were assigned to take part in this study at “Al-Nisour University College.” The finding demonstrated that the participants are affected by all the three aforesaid components. However, the component “avoidance behavior anxiety” had a higher effect rate on the participants’ attitudes compared to the two components, dubbed “cognitive and somatic” that showed otherwise. Added to this, the findings also revealed a significant difference between genders wherein female learners showed a higher rate of anxiety than their male counterparts. This points out that female students may highly have an inclination to evade the situations demanding writing. Linguistic difficulties, fear of teacher’s negative comments, insufficient writing practice and self-confidence were respectively detected as the highest influential elements behind arousing anxiety. The current study highlighted the causes of writing anxiety and the effect of its components on Iraqi EFL learners and might contribute to paving the way to new teaching methods or techniques to mitigate the effect of these writing anxiety components and boost self-confidence in Iraqi EFL.