ESL Writing Anxiety and its Effects on Writing Performance of College Students in an Academically Disadvantaged Context of Pakistan: A Case Study

Abstract

This study investigated the levels of ESL writing anxiety and its effects on the writing performance of 161 (85 male and 76 female) college students of Balochistan with a non-probability sampling. For data collection, the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) of Cheng (2004) was used in addition to an essay writing task completed by the participants. The SLWAI results indicated that overall ESLWA was significantly high (M= 2.99, SD = .67). Somatic anxiety (SA) was the most prevailing one (M=3.39, SD = .90). The second most significant type was cognitive anxiety (CA) (M=3.11, SD = .82), whereas, the avoidance behaviour (AB) was the third in level (M= 2.45, SD =.87). The statistical analysis of writing tasks revealed an adverse association between the WA and WP of the college students of Balochistan.