Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

In 2003，the New English Curriculum Standards (NECS) for Senior Middle Schoolwas promulgated by Chinese Ministry of Education aiming to propel the reformation ofEnglish education in senior middle schools. What's more, to adjust and reform theEnglish curriculum systems, the English curriculum structures and the English curriculumcontents, and to establish multiple English subject evaluation system are also the purposesfor NECS. In addition, in the NECS，it also advocates to draw more attention to theaffective factor of students. The NECS indicates that students with positive affectiontowards themselves can retain continuous learning motivation and receive favorableresults, while the students with negative emotion will, to some extent, have the negativeinfluence on their effects of English learning. Furthermore, the foreign languageeducation's focus has changed, that is the focus has shifted from studying how teachersteach to how students leam. We also tend to pay much more attention to the affectivefactor, which is viewed as one of the most vital elements influencing the effects oflearning. In other words, affective factor is regarded to play a vital role in foreignlanguage learning, for the reason that it is able to exert great impact on students' ability ofEnglish learning and their effects of English learning. Language learning anxiety, whichbelong to one of substantial affective variables, is viewed as the biggest obstacle inlearning a foreign language.

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1.2 Significance of the Study

In order to investigate the present degree of English writing anxiety as well as thepresent use frequency of English writing strategies in senior high school respectively, theauthor employs two questionnaires in this study. The scale named Second LanguageWriting Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) written by Y*S Cheng (2004) (see Appendix. I)becomes one of them and the other questionnaire is called Writing StrategiesQuestionnaire (WSQ)), which is borrowed from Petric and Czarl (2003) in their publishedarticle Validating a Writing Strategy Questionnaire (see Appendix. II). This study alsomeans to analyze overall anxiety degree of senior high school students at the present stageas well as to investigate the overall frequency of the use of the writing strategies of them.Furthermore, this study is going to interview those students who have different degree ofwriting anxiety. On the one hand，some of them may have very high degree of writinganxiety; On the other hand, the rest of them may experience low degree of writing anxiety.We hope to find out the reasons which can cause writing anxiety of senior high schoolwhen they are writing in English, and come up with some effective ways that can do somehelp to relieve students writing anxiety when they are writing in English. At the sametime, it is able to provide some practicable advice for teaching English writing.Furthermore, by adopting these advices, to some extent, some necessary reference forteachers to improve their teaching ways in how to teach students' writing ability andwriting degree can be found out by teachers. In addition, this study can instruct studentshow to ease their anxiety while writing in English，and enhance their ability of usingwriting strategies, so that they can find out the appropriate ways to improve their Englishwriting. Not only can it be able to develop their writing grades，but also, to most extent,their confidence will be strengthened while writing in English at the same time.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies of Writing Anxiety

Although the researches which are related to anxiety were conducted in 1940s, wecannot find out the accurate definition of anxiety. Spielberger (1972) holds the idea thatlearning anxiety is usually regarded as an unpleasant emotional condition. Leary (1982)thinks that anxiety means that the cognitive-affective response. “Foreign language anxietyis a distinctive complex of self-perceptions, beliefs，feelings, behaviors related toclassroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learningprocess "(Horwitz et al, 1986，128). Thanks to the development of the Daly-Miller'sWriting Apprehension Test, a mushroom number of researches have devoted to thesystematic study of writing anxiety. For example, a lot of essays use the words like"wring anxiety", “writing apprehension" and "writing block”. Writing apprehension,pointed out by Daly and Miller (1975a), refers to the situation and subject-specificindividual difference which concerned with people's general tendencies to approach oravoid situations perceived to demand writing accompanied by some amount of evaluation(Daly, 1978). Thompson (1980) holds the idea that writing apprehension as a "fear of thewriting process that outweighs the projected gain ‘ from the ability to write." Daly &Wilson (1983) defines that English writing apprehension is a distinct form of anxiety; it isunique to English written communication.

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2.2 Studies of Writing Strategies

What's more, it is developed by the learners and it can exert impact on the study ofthe students. MacArthur & Graham (1987) implement an empirical study on pupils whoview English as native language; they conclude that after adopting professional writingstrategies，pupils with weak writing strategies can improve their writing grades and leama lot of useful writing strategies. Kellogg (1988) earlier analyzes the reason why outlinestrategies can have great impact on writing effects. Rod Ellis (1994) indicates thatlearning strategies refer to special means or measures which are taken in the process oflanguage learning. At the same time, it also is the ways and procedures to acquire, todeposit, to extract, and to handle for learners. Khaldieh (2000) implements an empiricalstudy on students by the way of introspection. In his study, he writes down writingprocedures and writing strategies of students when they are writing. As a result, Khaldiehfinds out that all the students not only use the strategies of emotional and metacognitive,but also the strategies of compensation and social are used by the students. Among thosewriting strategies, Khaldieh indicates that emotional strategies exert an important impacton the process of writing.

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Chapter 3 Methodology ..........    17

3.1 Research Questions......... 17

3.2 Subjects......... 17

3.3 Instruments......... 18

3.4 Reliability of the Questionnaires......... 22

3.5 Procedures of Study .........23

Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion......... 25

4.1 Students' Attitude towards English Writing......... 25

4.2 Results of the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory......... 25

4.2.1 Descriptive Statistics of SLWAI  ......... 25

4.2.2 Characteristics of Somatic Anxiety......... 27

4.2.3 Characteristics of Avoidance Behavior.........28

4.2.4 Characteristics of Cognitive Anxiety......... 30

4.3 Results of the Second Language Writing Strategies Questionnaire......... 31

4.4Correlations between English Writing Anxiety and Writing Strategies......... 38

4.5 Analysis of the Interview......... 39

Chapter 5 Conclusion and Implications......... 41

5.1 Major Findings  .........41

5.2 Implication of the Study......... 42

5.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study.........45

Chapter 4 Data Analysis and Discussion

4.1 Students' Attitude towards English Writing

As Table 4.1 shows that, the number of students who are with the attitude towardsEnglish writing “I neither like it nor dislike it." is above fifty percent. And in the lastforty-five percent, only ten students of the 123 students hold the attitude that they likeEnglish writing. What's worse, among the 123 students, only one student of them holdsthe idea that he or she likes English very much. Twenty-eight students of the 123 thinkthat they dislike English writing, and sixteen of the 123 students consider that they don'tlike English writing at all. In a conclusion, we can easily come to the conclusion thatwhen comes to the students' attitude towards English writing, above half of theirs attitudetowards English writing are neutral. Besides that, only nine percent students in the lastforty-five percent are with the positive attitude towards English writing，while thirty-sixpercent students are with the negative attitude towards English writing. As a result, thestudents with negative attitude towards English writing are larger than the students withpositive attitude towards English writing.

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Conclusion

Based on the comprehensive review of the previous studies, in this study, theresearch offers a lot of insights about the characteristics of writing anxiety and writingstrategies use of the senior high school students. What's more, the correlation between thedegree of writing anxiety and the frequency use of writing strategies is also provided.First of all, the major senior high school students hold the neutral attitude towardswriting in English, which accounts 55% of the total, while in the last percent, only 9% ofthe senior high school students express that they like writing in English. And 36% of themhold the idea that they don't like writing in English. As a result, the students with negativeattitude towards English writing are larger than the students with positive attitude towardsEnglish writing. A large number of senior high school students lack the interests inwriting in English. The interest is the best teacher. For the reason that they don't prefer towrite in English, it is may become the reason that they experience writing anxiety andlack some effective writing strategies.

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Reference (omitted)