Iranian EFL Learners’ Perceived Writing Anxiety and the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency of their Task-based Writing: Are they Correlated?

Abstract

This paper reports on a research which was conducted to examine the association between English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ ratings of their writing anxiety and the quality of their task-based written production in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this aim, 45 Iranian high-intermediate EFL learners were asked to complete the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI) (Cheng, 2004) in order to rate their perceived level of anxiety while writing in English. In addition, to elicit samples of their written production, they were required to perform the narrative task of writing down a story based on a sequenced set of picture prompts. Having collected the data, Pearson correlation coefficient was run to establish the statistical significance of the correlations among the variables. The results displayed that participants’ perceived level of second language (L2) writing anxiety is negatively associated with the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of their task-based written output. The significance and implications of the outcomes are discussed in the light of relevant theoretical rationale and empirical evidence.