2.

1 Introduction This study is carried out to validate the causes or reasons that cause writing anxiety in ESL students of SMK Kepong and in the process, come up with suggestions to overcome these fears. Among the elements of how writing anxiety or writing apprehension is caused will be further studied is to the extent of how students themselves and teachers can lower the amount of anxiety to promote actual performance of the students or in this case ESL students. This chapter will also touch on the historical backgrounds of writing anxiety and how it can affect the overall learning experience of students, with relations to some recent issues.

2.2 Writing Anxiety As defined by the (American Psychiatric Association[APA], 2000; Vitek, Rosenzweig, & Stollings, 2006;), Anxiety is an emotional and/or physiological response to known and/or unknown causes that may range from a normal reaction to extreme dysfunction (indicative of an anxiety disorder), affect decision-making and adherence to treatment, and impair functioning and/or affect quality of life . Studies have shown that writing anxiety should not be grouped as general anxiety. As quoted in by Abu Shawish and Atea , writing anxiety as said by 1. (Daly 1978; Faigley et. al.1980:4), to be a psychological construct associated with a person's tendencies or predisposition to approach or avoid situations requiring writing accompanied by some amount of evaluation. In viewing of the two statements, it is safe to say that writing anxiety is often a problem which can indeed affect the quality of language learning. The foundations of believes are that, interest and a non threatening environment are the appropriate counter measure to address writing anxiety. This is the general assumption because despite 13 years

of formal and compulsory English language education, Malaysian students are still not well versed with the language. It seems that English language is slowly shifting from a second language (ESL) to a foreign language (EFL) these days. In the context of English writing, it is usually ignored as writing in English does not seem like a problem for students. But one has to question the methods used in schools especially during primary levels because teachers often provide ideal essays for students to memorize, and for what they do not memorize they cannot write. This becomes a problem when the same methodology is used even in secondary schools and students are generally not anxious about writing. This is a problem because when students are required to write based on their own ability; anxiety due to lack of proper guidance is often known to hinder their performance.(2) Poor composing process is a cause of writing apprehension Lee and Krashen (1997). A study by(3) (Wendy Hiew 2012) indicated that students needed long time periods to complete their essays as well not being familiar with the topic. In several studies, some known causes for this is that they had to mentally construct their ideas in their mother tongue before writing in English. Another reason also included by tertiary level students is that academic writing was not exposed to them in secondary schools. Apart from damaging the overall learning experience, it is also stated by (4)Crookall and Oxford (1991) that serious language anxiety may adversely affect students self-esteem, self-confidence, and ultimately hamper proficiency in language acquisition. (5) The fear of errors, unfamiliarity with the composing process, and lack of voice all may explain why the highly anxious basic writer fails when attempting to communicate via the written word (Thomas J.Reigstad 1978) Writing tasks can become a demanding task, especially if students are not exposed through proper channels, as well as learning methods. As Malaysian schools today are still rather teacher centered, some approaches such as independent writing, peer evaluation, the process approach and so forth are hard to carry out. Teachers are the main pillar to support

and facilitate such interests in writing. Although interest plays a large role in motivation and confidence, (7)we need a clearer understanding of how teachers and classroom practices can influence students' interest for the act of writing (Rebecca L. Lipstein and K. Ann Renninger 2007).(6) The age factor is also considered to be among the factors which can cause writing anxiety. (Ibrahim and Noor 2011)

2.3 Early Views on anxiety and second language learning Since the early 1960, anxiety to use the English language in Malaysia was not really known as the country had earned its independence not too long ago after the British colonization, many students of which were still educated using English language. Due to this, it is unfortunate that the documentation of relationship between anxiety and language learning was not really explored in terms of a Malaysian context. Despite those reasons, there was already conflicting research being proposed at the time. There were studies which found the anticipated negative relationship between anxiety and second language achievement, but several studies found no relationship, and positive relationships between anxiety and second language achievement were also identified (Chastain, 1975; Kleinmann, 1977)(8). In other words, the results showed that in contrast to teachers expectations where students performance would be low when experiencing anxiety, there were students who were able to achieve better results when anxiety sets in ( Horwitz 2001)(9).

2.4 Anxiety tests and scales As the researchers progressed in their views and theories of language anxiety, so did their instruments of how to test it. ( Horwitz 2001) ; Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), French Class Anxiety Scale (Gardner & Smythe, 1975), The English Use Anxiety Scale (Clment, Gardner, & Smythe, 1977), the English Test Anxiety Scale ,(Clment, Gardner, & Smythe, 1980), the French Use Anxiety Scale (Gardner, Smythe, & Clment, 1979), and the Spanish Use Anxiety Scale (Muchnick & Wolfe, 1982).However, in second language writing anxiety test Daly and Millers writing apprehension scale was the most commonly used. (Y.-S. Cheng 2004)(10)

2.5 Writing anxiety in Malaysian context The reality for a large number of Malaysian students is that English language is not the medium of choice to function socially and rarely use English language to discuss the contents of their school subject (Termit & Saravana Kumar 2012)(11). It is unfortunate that Malaysian students do not appreciate English language as much as the people of Malaysia did in the past. Most students nowadays write not because they want to, but because they have to write in English, so when given otherwise, they lack the interest and purpose to do so. This is that case in upper secondary as well as in tertiary level students where English is the more commonly used medium to impart knowledge and experience, much of which involves written tasks. The purpose of the present study is to determine the causes that induce writing

anxiety in Unisel Tesl students, and also to identify if students are at all aware of the fact that they suffer from writing anxiety. This is also an attempt to help students understand the types of writing anxiety that they face so that proper counter measures can be suggested and administered so as to help students make the most of their abilities when involved in a writing task.

2.6 Related studies There were several studies conducted to investigate writing anxiety , one of which was by Dr. Maria S. Rankin-Brown 2006 titled Addressing Writing Apprehension in Adult English Language Learners. While the nature of the survey was simple, some sound facts proven useful. The research clearly was designed to determine specific reasons as to what exactly caused writing apprehension. Among them were Frustrations stemming from self evaluation and self expectations of how well one should write, Fear of how the teacher will evaluate the writing, Fear of how their peers will evaluate their writing, and Fear of losing ones identity when using new rhetorical styles and patterns to write. All reasons pointed to the fear of evaluation more than anything else. Besides this, the emotional was also taken into account and would serve a useful guide line to my own research. The methodology used was the standard WAT (Writing apprehension Test) as well as interview sessions. The researcher was mainly focused on those who were experiencing high levels of writing anxiety and filtered the respondents to a total of 10 finalists which consisted of 5 males and 5 females. Although gender was not among the highlighted factors, the method used could be adapted to generally determine if the male versus female factor if feasible.

conlusion