The Relationship between Writing Anxiety and Writing Disposition among Secondary School Students

Abstract

Problem Statement: Writing is important in secondary schools because itunderpins the performance of students in most examinations. Writingdisposition, which specifically deals with the aspects of students’ attitudestoward writing, has also been studied by some researchers.Purpose of the Study: This study reports on the result of a study on thewriting anxiety and writing disposition of Turkish students from differentsocio-economic status backgrounds studying at public secondary schools.Determining whether there is a significant difference between thesecondary school students’ scores from writing anxiety and writingdisposition constitutes the research problem of this study.Method: This descriptive study uses a correlational survey model. Theparticipants included 707 students from grade five through eight, whoattended two different tests: the Writing Apprehension Scale and WritingDisposition Scale.Findings: The results showed that three of the six variables under study(gender, attitude toward Turkish language courses, and grade level) werestatistically significant for the Writing Apprehension test. Additionally,four out of six variables analyzed were statistically significant for theWriting Disposition test. A positive linear relationship between writing anxiety and writing disposition levels was found. Apparently, the more students liked Turkish course, the more anxious they became; a significant difference was found for the variable “positive attitude toward Turkish courses” for both scales. The results also showed that female students are more likely to encounter writing anxiety than male students.Conclusion and Recommendations: The severity of writing anxiety should be dealt with carefully as it can prevent students from becoming competent writers. The link between writing anxiety and writing disposition proposed in this article further explores the advantages and disadvantages of these two aspects of writing. It is recommended that writing anxiety be studied in different contexts because further understanding the reasons for anxiety when students produce qualified writing can be elaborated in this way.Keywords: Turkish course, secondary school students, writing instruction, writing disposition, writing anxiety