Writing Apprehension Among English as a Foreign Language Postgraduate Students

Abstract

Although many studies have investigated writing apprehension among students of different education levels during the last decades, several of its aspects have remained uninvestigated in different contexts. One of these contexts is North Cyprus. For this reason, this study aimed to measure the level of writing apprehension experienced by English as a foreign language (EFL) postgraduate students at this particular context when writing in English. The study also tried to explain whether variables such as age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status were correlated with writing apprehension. To achieve these aims, the researchers adopted Daly and Miller’s questionnaire called Writing Apprehension Test. A total of 37 EFL postgraduate students belonging to different ages, genders, academic levels, and socioeconomic statuses took part in the study. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS program to reveal whether there was a significant correlation between the aforementioned variables. Mean scores, standard deviations, Pearson correlation, frequencies, and percentages were employed to reveal the results. The study demonstrated that, though almost nearly half of the students were highly apprehensive, the majority of them experienced a moderate level of apprehension when writing in English and the relationship between writing apprehension levels and the variables was not statistically significant, that is, the results showed that age, gender, academic level, and socioeconomic status did not have any influence on writing apprehension.