Exploring the Relationship between Writing Anxiety and the Pedagogical Use of Online Learning Medium among Malaysian University Students

Abstract

According to United Nations in 2020, the pandemic of COVID-19 has caused the largest disruption of education systems in history. The sudden transition from traditional classroom to online classroom has caused many students to become anxious with their learning especially when they have to learn writing skills through several online mediums such as instant messenger (e. g. Whatsapp and Telegram), social media (e. g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube), live meeting session (e. g. Google Hangouts Meet, Zoom and Cisco Webex) and education tools (e. g. Google Classroom, Padlet and Kahoot). To address this issue, this qualitative study explored the reported experience of nine students from Diploma of Banking Studies who are taking the writing course through an online medium, namely Telegram. The students are prompted with a list of interview questions focusing on writing anxiety. Their responses were analysed, and two major themes were generated. The results revealed that the participants in this study described external and internal reasons as the causal factors to their writing anxiety. The internal reasons can be classified further into somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, and avoidance behaviour. The participants suggested a few major coping strategies to overcome their writing anxiety such as taking a deep breath, taking some time off from writing task, getting some entertainment and practising relaxation.