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Relationship between anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in writing
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Type
Thesis
Author
Tay, Sor Har
Supervisor
Lee, Francis Moi Fah
Abstract
The relationship between anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in essay writing is examined in this research. The subjects of this study were 231 first-year "A" level students. The research problem was identified because of the inherent difficulties of essay writing in the General Paper (GP).
To examine the relationship between anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in writing, the subjects had to respond to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch and Lushene, 1970), the Writing Apprehension Test (Daly and Miller, 1975a) and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor, 1950), before they wrote an essay each. After writing an essay, the subjects responded to two more test, the A-state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Writing Apprehension Test.
The subjects were also stratified according to sex, stream and task. Two kinds of writing tasks were assigned. About half of the population sample wrote an easy GP essay topic and another half wrote on a difficult GP easy topic. The essay scores awarded by two independent raters represent the criterion variables.
Statistical analysis was facilitated by using the Statistical Analysis System. Three statistical treatments were applied to compute the data; namely the product-moment correlation, the 't' test and Tukey's multiple comparison of means.
Findings of the data analysis yield a very small but statistically significant correlation between essay scores and post-task scores on the A-state and writing apprehension tests. In view of the consistent pattern of correlations between anxiety, writing apprehension and essay scores for the subgroups, it was decided that the null hypothesis should be rejected. It was thus, accepted that anxiety and writing apprehension do have a significant, albeit small, relationship with essay performance.
Multiple sources of variance may be attributed to the performer variables, namely the sex, stream and task assigned. Results of analysis suggest that these performer variables have an effect on the subjects' self-reports on anxiety and writing apprehension. In addition, methodological constraints related to the measurement of anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in writing, could have also been a source of variance.
This research has implications for the teaching of essay-writing in the General Paper. It would appear that pre-U centre students might require motivational remediation more so than junior college students; for whom teaching could be anchored in cognitively mediated skills of the composing process. Also, essay topics that are easy seem to provide a more accurate assessment of students' performance in writing since scores have no correlation with anxiety and writing apprehension at all.
Finally, this research may be extended by investigating the use of the Writing Apprehension Test as a multi-dimensional instrument to understand its function as a measure of trait- or state-anxiety. Since the essay scores are fundamental to such studies, the assessment of essay performance represents a very challenging area of research.
To examine the relationship between anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in writing, the subjects had to respond to the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch and Lushene, 1970), the Writing Apprehension Test (Daly and Miller, 1975a) and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (Taylor, 1950), before they wrote an essay each. After writing an essay, the subjects responded to two more test, the A-state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Writing Apprehension Test.
The subjects were also stratified according to sex, stream and task. Two kinds of writing tasks were assigned. About half of the population sample wrote an easy GP essay topic and another half wrote on a difficult GP easy topic. The essay scores awarded by two independent raters represent the criterion variables.
Statistical analysis was facilitated by using the Statistical Analysis System. Three statistical treatments were applied to compute the data; namely the product-moment correlation, the 't' test and Tukey's multiple comparison of means.
Findings of the data analysis yield a very small but statistically significant correlation between essay scores and post-task scores on the A-state and writing apprehension tests. In view of the consistent pattern of correlations between anxiety, writing apprehension and essay scores for the subgroups, it was decided that the null hypothesis should be rejected. It was thus, accepted that anxiety and writing apprehension do have a significant, albeit small, relationship with essay performance.
Multiple sources of variance may be attributed to the performer variables, namely the sex, stream and task assigned. Results of analysis suggest that these performer variables have an effect on the subjects' self-reports on anxiety and writing apprehension. In addition, methodological constraints related to the measurement of anxiety, writing apprehension and performance in writing, could have also been a source of variance.
This research has implications for the teaching of essay-writing in the General Paper. It would appear that pre-U centre students might require motivational remediation more so than junior college students; for whom teaching could be anchored in cognitively mediated skills of the composing process. Also, essay topics that are easy seem to provide a more accurate assessment of students' performance in writing since scores have no correlation with anxiety and writing apprehension at all.
Finally, this research may be extended by investigating the use of the Writing Apprehension Test as a multi-dimensional instrument to understand its function as a measure of trait- or state-anxiety. Since the essay scores are fundamental to such studies, the assessment of essay performance represents a very challenging area of research.
Date Issued
1986
Call Number
BF575.A6 Tay
Date Submitted
1986