Investigating student's second language writing anxiety : a case study

Anxiety is one of the essential factors in Second Language Learning. It plays a significant role in determining students’ performance in the target language, be it positive or negative. Feeling nervous, uncertain or worry while engaging in a target language may cause students to perform poorly in class, and this normally results in getting poor grades in their examination; and this is what students experience in writing class. In relation to this, the study aims to investigate the relationship between students’ anxiety in writing essay tasks in English and their choice to do the writing task, and also, the effects of this anxiety to their choice to do writing task in the English Language. A group of students doing Level 3 Reading and Writing in English (RWE) in Universiti Malaysia Sabah were asked to answer Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLAWAI).