Efl Students’ Writing Anxiety In Academic Writing Class: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

While the phenomenon of writing anxiety is not a new issue, there has been little information on how EFL students experience writing anxiety in an academic class through narrative inquiry. This study aims to analyze EFL students' anxiety in Academic Writing classes, how it affects their writing process, and how they manage their anxiety in writing through narrative inquiry. A reflective journal and informal interview were used to explore fourteen students’ experience in the Academic Writing Class at the English Language Education Program, Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana Salatiga. The data analysis revealed two types of writing anxiety experienced by EFL students: cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety. Those types of anxiety affect EFL students’ writing performance because they have less confidence when writing an essay, take a long time to finish the essay, get difficult to explain the topic essay, focus more on the grammar structure rather than the content, and sometimes the essay out of the topic. This study also found three strategies used by EFL students to cope with their writing anxiety: asking for help, reading some online sources, and listening to music.