ESL pre-university learners’ writing apprehension levels and their writing quality

The study examines the relationship between writing apprehension and argumentativewriting quality of L2 learners. Literature revealed that there is a need for pre-university institutions to have sufficient research input on writing problems in particular the writing apprehension among their learners.For this reason, the study investigated the relationship between the overall writing quality scores and the writing apprehension dimensions’ scores. The study also investigated the relationship between overall writing apprehension scores and the learners’ writing quality subscale scores. Finally, the writing quality of a group of high and low apprehensive writers’ argumentative compositions were examined qualitatively.320 pre-university learners participated in the study and the instruments employed were Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), argumentative writing and Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW). These findings were subjected to descriptive and correlation analyses using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). As for the qualitative analysis, a purposive selection of 30 argumentative compositions were selected based on the individuals’ writing apprehension scores to determine the differences in the writing quality between the high and low apprehensive writers.The results indicated that there was a moderate level of writing apprehension among the pre-university learners in argumentative writing. Among the SLWA dimensions,cognitive and somatic anxieties obtained the highest mean score. Besides, the highest mean score was observed in the language conventions and organization dimensions.Additionally, the qualitative research indicated that compositions produced by high and low apprehensive writers differ significantly in structure, language use, and amount of information conveyed . The low apprehensive writers have better repertoire of vocabulary, grammar and overall language ability than the high apprehensive writers.As seen from the results of the study, writing apprehension did in some ways affect the writing quality of the students. Therefore, it is important that writing instructors are aware of these debilitating factors so that they can empower their students to write successful compositions.To conclude, the main contribution of this study is the results of the writing apprehension scores on SLWAI to writing task revealed that some oderatelyapprehensive learners scored excellent and competent writing scores. This suggests that these learners’ in spite of their writing apprehension might possess a sufficient amount of persistence, determination, diligence or other positive characteristics to battle writing apprehension and be successful language learners. Apart from that, this study has utilized analytic scoring using ASAW. The pre-university learners, therefore, can have some useful diagnostic information about the points of strengths and weaknesses in their argumentative writing. This will gradually improve their writing quality in L2 writing. Finally, writers with low apprehension showed fluency in argumentative writing. They wrote with three times more words than the high apprehensive learners in a timed writing task.

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