ABSTRACT
Nowadays, an important area of research in second language acquisition is the anxiety associated with writing in a foreign language. Some studies have indicated that anxiety may hinder EFL learners’ foreign language writing performance. Researchers have also studied the factors of it. However, more detailed research on foreign language writing anxiety is lacking. Therefore, this paper explores the causes and consequences of English writing anxiety among Chinese high school students by collecting data via questionnaires and uses factor analysis, descriptive analysis, and correlation analysis. The results indicated that 1. English writing anxiety has four underlying factors -- fear of evaluation (FLWAS1), low self-confidence (FLWAS2), interest in English writing (FLWAS3), and fear of writing in English (FLWAS4). 2. A descriptive analysis of English writing anxiety was conducted, and it had an average value of 3.071. It indicates that the study sample of Chinese high school students’ anxiety level in English writing is above moderate. 3. Correlation analysis indicated that there was no significant correlation between English writing anxiety and Chinese high school students’ performance in English writing. There was no significant correlation between anxiety and performance in English writing under Chinese secondary education, possibly due to additional factors such as English writing templates and extra-curricular English writing tutorials.
