EFL Writing Apprehension: The Macro or the Micro?

Abstract

This study was part of a doctoral project to explore the writing apprehension levels of 121 second-year undergraduate Saudi student writers who were studying English as a foreign language and for specific purposes in a Saudi industrial college.The study draws on Dörnyei’s (1994) framework of L2 motivation levels and their micro-motivational conditions in L2 learning situations, and addresses EFL writing apprehension in strategy-related conditions. For data collection, aWriting Strategy Apprehension Scale (WSAS) was developed and adapted from a test designed by John Daly and Michael Miller (1975) and from the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) designed by Cheng (2004).The participants were classified into three levels of apprehension (apprehensive strategy users, average apprehensive strategy users, and low apprehensive strategy users). The results showwhile the majority of the participants (57.9%) were average in their stress and apprehension levels towards writing strategies, almost a third of them (31.4%) were highly apprehensive. In addition, the most stressful strategies were those that indicate the lack of generating ideas, the care about accuracy, and the follow of teacher’s expectations.