An Investigation of EFL College Students’ L2 Academic Writing Anxiety

Abstract

In order to explore L2 writers’ psychological aspects, this project investigated the academic writing anxiety experienced by Korean college students majoring in English. Accordingly, the present study made use of both quantitative and qualitative data. Cheng’s (2004) Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) was administered to 150 participants to identify their levels, patterns, and possible sources of L2 writing anxiety, along with their scores on the TOEFL writing task and the qualitative data from the open-ended questionnaire. The quantitative findings indicated that participants experienced a moderate level of L2 academic writing anxiety, which negatively correlated with their L2 writing performance in terms of both quality and quantity. The qualitative findings revealed four major themes that caused L2 academic writing anxiety: linguistic knowledge, writing skills for content development, evaluation, and task environment. The pedagogical implications for EFL writers were discussed.