An Investigation of Foreign Language Writing Anxiety Inside Vs. Outside Classroom among Arabic-Speaking Learners of English in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that anxiety is considered an obstacle that hinders the process of foreign language development, including writing anxiety. This research attempts to investigate the levels of English Foreign Language (EFL) writing anxiety inside- vs. outside-classroom contexts among Arabic-speaking learners of English and to determine the anxiety-provoking factors in these contexts and the potential remedies for them. A total of 15 female Arabic-English majors students at Taif University in Saudi Arabia were interviewed in the study. The findings suggest that the participants suffer from high levels of writing anxiety in the classroom context, whilst they experienced low levels of anxiety in the outside-classroom context. This may have originated from the fact that the in-classroom context entails severe anxiety-provoking factors such as fear of judgements from others, time constraint, unfamiliar topics, striving for perfection, inadequate practice, former painful experience, lack of supporting resources and so on. The participants account for the low levels of anxiety when writing in the outside-classroom context that the aforementioned triggers do not exist or that some of them hardly occur when writing online, for instance. Besides, the outside-classroom context permits stress-free methods such as accessing supporting resources online. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications.

1. Introduction

Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis [1] suggests that learners’ feelings negatively affect the development of second/foreign language. Negative emotions including low motivation, low self-confidence and anxiety function as filters that hinder language development.

According to Horwitz et al. ([2], p. 125), Anxiety is described as ‘a subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system’. Foreign language learners often feel worried and nervous when learning or using a second or foreign language. Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA), also called as Xenoglossophobia, is defined as ‘a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process’ ([2], p. 128). It has been established that FLA has several aspects, including reading, listening, speaking, and writing anxiety. Second Language Writing Anxiety (SLWA) is described as ‘a general avoidance of writing and of situations perceived by the individuals to potentially require some amount of writing accompanied by the potential for evaluation of that writing’ ([3], p. 4). For the purpose of the present study, English foreign language (EFL) writing anxiety and English second language (ESL) writing anxiety will be referred to as the same.

Although writing is a fundamental productive language skill, countless EFL learners encounter several challenges in writing. Empirical evidence suggests that anxiety is considered an emotional block and an obstacle during the process of foreign language development, including writing anxiety [4, 5, 6]. Evidence of interlanguage representations can be found in foreign language learners’ writing, which suggests that they face a potential learnability problem. Findings of early research suggest that not-target-like representations increase when writing anxiety increases (e.g. [7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13]). Empirical evidence suggests that high-anxious learners are acknowledged to attain poorer foreign language command (e.g. [14]), including lower writing performance (e.g. [15, 16]). This is evident in instructional settings rather than naturalistic settings.

Learners write for real-life purposes not to pass or get good grades in classes. The majority of studies in the field has paid extensive attention to classroom anxiety. This brings up the question of whether EFL learners would experience the same levels of anxiety while writing in real-life contexts such as writing mails or blog posts. Thus, the present study contributes to the field by shedding some light on some psychological facets of writing, explicitly writing anxiety not only in classroom contexts. The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine if Arabic-speaking learners of English experience the same writing anxiety levels in naturalistic as well as instructional settings and if the anxiety-provoking factors of these contexts are different from the learners’ perspectives. A total of 15 female Arabic English majors students at Taif University in Saudi Arabia participated in this study. They responded to a face-to-face interview that was advanced to determine their EFL writing anxiety levels and their triggers in different contexts (i.e. instructional vs. naturalistic) from their own perspectives.

2. Previous research

Early research on FLA studies has reported a steady negative correlation between FLA and learners’ performance (e.g. [15, 16]). There has been a contemporary trend to determine more particularly not only the levels of FLA but also the triggers of FLA and the relationship of FLA to different foreign language aspects. A large and growing volume of research has paid extensive attention to speaking anxiety (e.g. [17, 18]), yet more work has been conducted lately on reading anxiety (e.g. [19, 20]), listening anxiety (e.g. [21, 22]) and writing anxiety (e.g. [4, 5]).

Research on ESL/EFL writing demonstrated that anxiety has great impacts on writing (e.g. [3, 4, 5, 6, 15, 16, 23, 24, 25]). A number of studies revealed that learners with high rates of writing anxiety wrote simpler and shorter pieces of writings with less quality than their low-anxious peers did according to Faigley et al. [26] and Hassan [3]. Empirical evidence also showed that high-anxious learners have poor self-confidence (e.g. [3]) and achieved poorer scores (e.g. [6]), which indicates low language competency. MacIntyre and Gardner [27] claimed that FLA reduces when the learners’ proficiency level gets advanced.

A large number of researchers (e.g. [2, 28, 29, 30]) have paid extensive attention to Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA), with a special focus on both internal and external triggers of FLCA. MacIntyre and Gardner [31, 32] claimed that FLCA may perhaps be amplified by extreme self-evaluation, uncertainty over disappointment, and fear of judgements from others. All these result in hindering language development according to MacIntyre and Gregersen [30]. Cheng [15, 16] examined causes related with ESL writing anxiety, and he also designed the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), to measure the levels of ESL writing anxiety. Cheng [16] tested the scale and the three subscales (i.e. Somatic Anxiety, Cognitive Anxiety, and Avoidance) on a sample of 421 EFL Taiwanese learners. Cheng [16] concluded that both the overall scale and the subscales of the SLWAI are fundamentally reliable and valid.

In the same vein, a number of studies attempted to capture some anxiety-provoking sources in a class across different language learners. Lin [33] conducted a qualitative study to investigate the reasons that trigger writing anxiety among university students (n = 16) in Taiwan. The findings revealed five key triggers including time restrictions, instructors’ evaluation, peer’s competition, uninterested topics and uniformed layouts. Likewise, Zhang [6] identified some causes of writing anxiety including former painful experience, linguistic challenges including poor grammar and vocabulary knowledge, inadequate practice, fear of tests (TEM), poor knowledge of relevant information, poor self-confidence, concern over harmful evaluation, inadequate writing methods and insufficient informative feedback.

Besides, Genç and Yaylı [4] reported that the Turkish learners suffered from more FLA writing anxiety during examinations than in class or at home. Topic choice, gathering supporting ideas, time constraint and insufficient informative feedback were established to be the most anxiety-provoking reasons for the learners, which were tracked by linguistic challenges such as grammar, brainstorming, and organisation of the relevant ideas. More interestingly, they listed other sources of high FLA writing anxiety including the sense of perfection.

Furthermore, Nagahashi [34] examined the effectiveness of cooperative learning methods for decreasing foreign language anxiety among freshman Japanese students (n = 38) who joined the Akita University for English Academic Purposes course. The findings suggest that planned cooperative learning activities may be successful in decreasing language anxiety by offering a non-threatening, supportive setting in which the learners can advance their language skills.

Although extensive research has been carried out on EFL writing anxiety, no single study compares EFL writing anxiety in the inside- vs. outside-classroom contexts from the learners’ perspectives. The current research attempts to fill this gap by affording learners’ opinions not only on the levels of their FLA writing anxiety but also on its triggers and the potential remedies. The majority of the studies offers a list of causes suggested from the researchers’ opinions, but only a few of them reported the learners’ opinions (e.g. [23, 25]). Thus, this study measures the level of EFL writing anxiety experienced by Arabic English majors in different contexts. Furthermore, it explores the reasons why Arabic EFL learners feel anxious about English writing inside vs. outside classroom and offers some suggested potential remedies from the learners’ perspectives.

The findings of this study may help to advance EFL learning and teaching, for example, generating a stress-free writing setting, pinpointing high-anxious learners and determining the underlying triggers of learners’ unsuccessfulness to be tackled. Based on the reported triggers, some learning and teaching methods were suggested to decrease EFL writing anxiety and support EFL writing performance accordingly.

3. The empirical study

The study endeavours to capture the levels of EFL writing anxiety in different environments and explore the leaners’ views on the updated anxiety-provoking sources of their EFL writing anxiety nowadays. Also, it suggests some potential remedies from the learners’ perspectives.

3.1 Research questions

This study set out to answer the following questions:

1. What are the learners’ levels of EFL writing anxiety in in-class vs. out- of-class contexts according to their self-reported proficiency levels?

2. What are the anxiety-provoking factors in in-class vs. out- of-class contexts from the learners’ perspectives?

3. What are the methods that the learners often use to reduce EFL writing anxiety in in-class vs. out- of-class contexts?

3.2 Research design

This study attempts to measure the levels of EFL writing anxiety in inside- vs. outside-classroom contexts among Arabic learners of English in Saudi Arabia from the learners’ perspectives. In this vein, it also endeavours to identify the up-to-date triggers of EFL writing anxiety in in-class vs. out- of-class contexts from the learners’ perspective. Besides, it proposes some potential solutions from the learners’ perspectives. To achieve the study purposes, a total of 15 female Arabic-English majors students at Taif University in Saudi Arabia participated in this study. The informants’ ages ranged from 19 to 22 years (M = 19.87, SD = 0.74). They fulfilled all the admission requirements including achieving 47 in STEP. All of them must take 3 hours of writing courses (i.e. basic, intermediate, advanced) in one writing course each semester for three succeeding years. However, the participants were not classified according to this standard due to the fact that all of them completed the course successfully and that their scores are not based on a standard scale. Since the participants were asked to self-rate their writing anxiety, they were also asked to self-report their linguistic proficiency levels in EFL. The researcher attempted to determine the relationship between their self-reported linguistic-proficiency levels and their self-reported levels of writing anxiety.

A semi-structured interview research method was adapted in the current qualitative study. As suggested by Patton [35], a semi structured-interview is planned to gather in-depth responses from the participants and to set sharp borders of questions in evading broader participant responses. To achieve the study purposes, 15 participants were interviewed, in order to capture their own perspectives. This tool aimed to encourage the participants to give extra details and share their feelings and opinions related to the levels, triggers and any potential solutions of their writing anxiety.

The data collection tool consists of a background section that collected demographic data of the participants such as age and self-rated proficiency levels (1 = elementary, 5 = advanced) and then three open-ended interview questions. So as to answer the first research question, the levels of EFL writing anxiety of the participants were assessed by the first question in the interview. The mean scores were inspired by Zhang’s [6] classification: high level of anxiety for a mean score over 65, low level of anxiety for scores lower than 50 and moderate level for scores between 50 and 65. To simplify the 1–100 scale, the researcher used a short version (1 = low anxiety, 10 = high anxiety). Initially, the participants were asked if they experienced anxiety while writing and then they were requested to rate the extent to which they felt anxious while writing inside vs. outside the English classroom. Whereas, the second question aimed to determine the sources of EFL writing anxiety during the process of writing inside vs. outside the English classroom. The third question explores the methods they often use to decrease their writing anxiety in the classroom vs. out of the-classroom and allows them to recommend any further methods that they think can help.

After completing the writing courses in the program, the participants were invited to share their feelings and opinions in a face-to-face interview that took approximately 20–25 minutes for each participant. The participants were interviewed through a digital pen recorder. The participants were encouraged to feel relaxed and frankly share their writing experience and what triggered their anxiety during the phase of writing in class as well as out of class.

Some of the interview questions were inspired by previous research (i.e. [4, 33, 36]). Additional questions were included in order to meet the nature of the study. The participants were inquired to (a) rate their levels of EFL writing anxiety they often experienced in inside- vs. outside-classroom contexts (if any), (b) mention the anxiety-provoking triggers of writing inside and outside of classrooms including individuals and conditions and finally (c) clarify their methods of decreasing writing anxiety and recommend any further methods to diminish FLA writing anxiety in the -classroom vs. out of the classroom. With these open-ended questions, the participants freely communicated their own feelings and perspectives.

Ethical consideration was taken into account, and all of the participants signed informed consents. The Participants were compensated for their participation (SRA 50 gift cards). The design was piloted (n = 3), and necessary adjustments were made accordingly. Three experienced EFL teachers, then, examined the research tools and gave their consent afterwards. The data collection was completed in 2 weeks.

As far as the qualitative analysis of this study is concerned, the researcher analysed the data using a constant comparison approach by means of pattern-coding method (e.g. [33, 37, 38, 39]) for the emerging themes. The researchers searched for similar assertions that belonged to different themes emerging from the learners’ views and then intellectualised them into numerous key concepts. That is, their responses were constantly compared and then distributed into subdivisions, which were categorised as codes in view of the classifications. Finally, the frequencies and percentages were gauged through the numbers of replies with the same codes in each class. In the discussion section, some examples of the participants’ responses will be anonymously shared with digits (e.g. interviewee no. 8) to maintain high confidentiality.

4. Results

Data collected from the interview were analysed and discussed with respect to the research questions regarding the anxiety levels and triggers and the methods of reducing EFL writing anxiety from the learners’ perspectives.

4.1 The levels of EFL writing anxiety in different environments among Arabic-English majors with different self-reported proficiency levels

4.1.1 Research question 1: what are the learners’ levels of foreign language writing anxiety inside-class vs. outside-class contexts?

The first research question explores the most EFL anxiety-provoking environment from the learners’ perspectives with respect to the writing skill according to different self-reported proficiency levels. All the participants agreed that they experienced FLA writing anxiety in the two contexts. Nevertheless, the levels of foreign language writing anxiety largely vary in the two contexts. The results show that the participants suffered from high levels of EFL writing anxiety in the in-classroom context (M = 7.87, SD = 1.25). On the other hand, they experienced low levels of EFL writing anxiety in the outside-classroom context (M = 3.13, SD = 1.13), as Table 1 shows.

Anxiety levels	no.	M	SD	Minimum	Maximum
In-class	15	7.87	1.25	6	10
Out-of-class	15	3.13	1.13	1	5

Table 1.

The learners’ writing anxiety levels in-class vs. out- of-class.

The levels of FLA writing anxiety in the inside-classroom context vary from 1 to 5, whereas the levels of FLA writing anxiety in the outside-classroom context vary from 6 to 10, as Table 2 shows. This suggests that the percentage of EFL writing anxiety inside the classroom is higher than that outside the classroom. The participants in the in-classroom context were found to suffer from greatly higher levels of EFL writing anxiety than writing in out-classroom contexts. This may be attributed to several factors that the second question attempts to uncover.

Settings	no.	Anxiety Levels	Valid percentage
In-class	3	6	20.0
	2	7	13.3
	5	8	33.3
	4	9	26.7
	1	10	6.7
Out-of-class	1	1	6.7
	3	2	20.0
	6	3	40.0
	3	4	20.0
	2	5	13.3

Table 2.

The percentage of the learners’ writing anxiety levels in-class vs. out- of-class.

Moreover, the results show the levels of the learners’ writing anxiety according to their self-reported proficiency levels in both contexts; the low-intermediate learners experience the highest levels of writing anxiety (M = 8.22, SD = .67), followed by the high-intermediate learners (M = 8.00, SD = 1.83), then the advanced learners (M = 6.00, SD = .00) in the classroom. Whereas, the low-intermediate learners experience the highest levels of writing anxiety (M = 3.00, SD = 1.41), followed by the high-intermediate learners (M = 300, SD = 1.12), then the advanced learners (M = 2.00, SD = .00) in the outside-classroom context, as Table 3 shows. This brings evidence that the less proficient the learners are, the more anxious they are likely to feel.

Settings	Proficiency levels	no.	Mean	SD	Minimum	Maximum
In-class	Low-inter	4	8.22	.67	6	10
	High-inter	9	8.00	1.83	7	9
	Advanced	2	6.00	.00	6	6
Out-of-class	Low-inter	4	3.00	1.41	1	5
	High-inter	9	3.00	1.12	4	4
	Advanced	2	2.00	.00	1	5

Table 3.

Writing anxiety levels according to the learners’ proficiency levels.

4.2 Sources of EFL writing anxiety in different environments among Arabic-English majors

4.2.1 Research question 2: what are the anxiety-provoking triggers in in-classroom vs. out-classroom contexts?

The second research question explores the most EFL writing anxiety-provoking factors in different settings from the learners’ perspectives. Figure 1 shows a total of fourteen EFL writing anxiety-provoking factors found in the study including: low motivation, poor self-confidence, striving for perfection, linguistic difficulties, inadequate practice, fear of judgement from others, competitions, former painful experience, time restrictions, uninterested topics, poor knowledge of relevant information, lack of accessible supporting resources, uniformed layouts and inadequate writing skills.

Figure 1.

Sources of EFL writing anxiety in different settings among Arabic-speaking learners of English.

However, the impact of the reported sources wasfound not to be the same in the two contexts. For instance, for the in-classroom context, fear of judgements from others was observed to be among the most important anxiety-provoking factors (100%). For example, participant no. 2 states, ‘I often feel nervous because I’m afraid of what other people would say about my writing’. Whereas, former painful experience was observed to be to among the primary sources of EFL writing anxiety in the out-classroom context (53.33%). For example, participant no. 5 points out, ‘I used to feel nausea and had stomach cramps while writing in class and I remember the pain every time I write’. Furthermore, 13 of the participants (86.67%) reported suffering from anxiety triggered by inadequate writing methods in the classroom, whereas only 6 of the participants (40%) were found to suffer from the same reason in the 0ut-classroom context. For example, participant no. 10 asserts, ‘I often feel nervous in class because I know my writing skills are quite poor’.

For a more detailed picture, consider the following statement by interviewee no. 8 who extensively reported different sources of EFL writing anxiety:

Actually there are many reasons that make me feel anxious when writing in English, but my big concern is getting low grades or negative comments from my professor or my classmates. I worry that they would not like my writing or think my writing is worthless. I became very picky about grammar, sentence structure, and word choice because I am frightened of failing or being criticised. Yet, I feel that writing outside classroom, such as writing blog posts, does not make me more frightened or stressful in the same way it really does in the classroom. May be because nobody will directly judge me! And I got a plenty of time and I can freely consult and check some useful online resources for help whenever I want. This makes me more relaxed.. I think…

All of the participants totally agreed these triggers increase anxiety, which has a negative impact on your writings. This supports Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis [1], which proposes that learners’ feelings such as anxiety negatively affect the development of second/foreign language and function as filters that obstruct their language development.

4.3 Methods of reducing EFL writing anxiety in different environments among Arabic-English majors

4.3.1 Research question 3: what are the methods you often use to reduce EFL writing anxiety in in-classroom vs. out-classroom contexts?

Based on the interview data, the participants suggest some strategies that they often use to lessen their writing anxiety; the common strategies include: (1) three participants suggest practicing writing in English and sharpening writing techniques; the more you write, the less anxious you feel, the better you write; for example, participant no. 5 states, ‘Practice makes perfect, I believe the more I write, the less stressful I will be’; (2) four participants recommend not to avoid writing in English to build self-confidence and stress the role of repeated exposure; for example, participant no. 9 asserts, ‘to feel less stressful while writing, we should face it…face what you always fear the most ..This makes you get used to it’; (3) five participants suggest advancing their lexicon knowledge to help them recognise the appropriate words or phrases for writing in any given context; for example, participant no. 12 points out, ‘I do believe that a writer with a very rich amount of vocabulary will feel more confident and less stressful while writing’; (4) three participants recommend accessing different supporting resources to enhance their writing quality makes them feel more relaxed; for example, participant no. 13 states, ‘I feel less anxious and I write better when I have something I could rely on such as a dictionary or online supporting materials’ and (5) two participants suggest expanding their motivation by forming a positive mindset when they are requested to write in English; for example, participant no. 14 points out, ‘I think motivation plays a role in lowering my anxiety especially when I write outside classes’.

For a more detailed picture, consider the following statement by interviewee no. 3 who extensively reported different methods of reducing EFL writing anxiety:

In my mind, I think I am always under a lot of pressure because I want to make everything perfect. But I know nothing is perfect. We have to face this reality and we should not avoid any obstacle. That’s why we have to be objective and accept our weaknesses and work on them. I always do my best to practise writing in English as much as possible to enhance my confidence and then my writings. This can help reducing language anxiety, I think. And of course, we need support from our teachers and classmates. This can help in building some kind of positive mindset which make us realise that these obstacles are parts of the long journey.

Taken together, the results showed that the learners largely felt more anxious when writing in the classroom rather than outside the classroom. The participants asserted that they suffered when writing in exams particularly, then in everyday class, and finally in the out-classroom context, such as writing at home, including writing emails or writing on online networks such as blog posts. This may have originated from the fact that the fear of judgements from others including teachers and peers generates the most anxiety-provoking conditions in the classroom. The learners also listed other triggers for feeling nervous in in-classroom contexts including: time constraints, unfamiliar writing topics, lack of accessing supporting resources. They also emphasised that due to the fact that these severe triggers are absent or seldom occur in out-classroom contexts, they usually feel less anxious when writing.

5. Discussion

The study attempts to capture the levels of EFL writing anxiety in different environments and explore the leaners’ opinions on the updated anxiety-provoking sources of their EFL writing anxiety nowadays. Also, it suggests some potential remedies from the learners’ perspectives.

As far as the first question is concerned, the results of the present study suggest that Arabic-English majors suffer from writing anxiety at different levels according to the settings of writing. The participants in classroom were found to suffer from largely greater levels of EFL writing anxiety than when writing in outside-classroom contexts. The participants asserted that they suffered from panic attacks and some painful physical symptoms including rapid heart rate, feeling stressed, and sweating in in-classroom contexts. However, these symptoms are mild, absent or rare when writing in outside-classroom contexts. These findings support the conclusion of Genç and Yaylı [4] who found that the learners suffered from more FLA writing anxiety in class especially during examinations than at home. This may be attributed to several factors that the second question attempts to uncover.

Furthermore, the first question also examines the links between writing anxiety in different contexts and self-rated language proficiency. The results show that the low-intermediate learners experience the highest levels of writing anxiety, followed by the high-intermediate learners, then the advanced learners. This suggests that the less proficient the learners are, the more anxious they are likely to feel. This supports the claim by MacIntyre and Gardner [27] that FLA decreases when the learner’s proficiency level gets advanced.

As far as the second question is concerned, different themes were captured in the interview and emerged as the sources that made the learners highly anxious. As for the individuals and settings that trigger EFL writing anxiety from the learners’ point of view, the interview yields a number of the key sources of EFL writing anxiety experienced by Arabic-English majors. A deep investigation of the sources of EFL writing anxiety showed that in-classroom writing entails severe anxiety-provoking factors such as linguistics difficulties and fear of judgements from others and fear of examinations, which involves fear of low grading and teacher’s negative evaluation. Furthermore, because of their perceived poor writing competency, poor self-confidence and fruitless teachers’ feedback, they suffered from a concern of receiving low evaluation and low grades. This seems to be consistent with Cheng’s [15] claim that it is more vital how learners assess their writing competence rather than their real competence. Therefore, learners’ having true evaluation is as important as their writing competency.

Furthermore, the participants listed some common factors that trigger EFL writing anxiety including time constraint, unfamiliar topics and poor topical information. The participants agreed that writing under time constraints was one of the key triggers of their writing anxiety in the classroom. Inadequate time was one of the main reasons for preventing them from reaching an effective thinking process, which is essential for in-classroom writing. These findings support the findings of previous research (e.g. [4, 6, 33, 40]). Also, some communal triggers are found in both inside- and outside-classroom contexts, such as linguistic difficulties including poor vocabulary familiarity and low grammar awareness, inadequate writing practice, inadequate writing methods, poor self-confidence and low motivation.

On the other hand, the participants justified the reasons for feeling less anxious when writing outside the classroom that the aforementioned triggers do not exist or that some of them hardly occur when writing emails or posting blogs online, for instance. Besides, the outside-classroom context permits stress-free methods such as writing on topics of their interests and accessing supporting resources online, which help in advancing their writing performance. Several learners declared that they feel less anxious and can productively generate ideas owing to the lack of time limitation out of the classroom. Furthermore, a number of participants mentioned that they usually felt less anxious when writing in outside-classroom settings due to the lack of perfection in contrast to what they often feel in class because they must produce high-quality piece of writings within a very limited time.

In the same vein, the topics of writing have an essential impact on the learner’s writing, especially if there are certain appointed topics in class. So as to write successfully, an individual must have proper cognitive representations and appropriate vocabulary familiarity, as Hyland [41] also suggested. Hence, while familiar topics might support constructive attitudes regarding writing, unfamiliar topics may be inconvenient for the learners. This supports Cheng’s [16] conclusion that unfamiliar topics may enhance not only less-competent learners’ but also highly competent learners’ EFL anxiety. The flexibility of writing outside the classroom helps in reducing FLA levels. The participants asserted that because they are unforced to write outside the classroom on a certain topic with uniformed layouts, they feel less anxious, and they believe their writing performance is improved as a result. For instance, they may perhaps choose to write online some posts on topics of their interests, for example, sport, fashion, politics, food and travel. Familiar topics encourage them to overcome the lack of vocabulary required to generate appropriate writing. Moreover, a number of participants emphasised that peer competition is a source of their writing anxiety in the in-classroom context, whereas they find self-competition in both contexts is a very key motive for them to achieve a certain goal.

The triggers of EFL writing anxiety emerged in the present study are generally consistent with the relevant literature. Most of the triggers of EFL writing anxiety found broadly supports the findings of other studies in this area including concerns over judgements from others including teachers’ evaluation and low grading, time limitation (e.g. [4, 6, 16, 31, 32, 33]), challenges triggered by unfamiliar topics [33, 40], uniformed writing layouts [33], low self-confidence (e.g. [3]), striving for perfection (e.g. [4]) and so on. Another significant updated source of writing anxiety that emerged in this study is the lack of supporting resources, which was not reported in the previous literature.

As far as the third question is concerned, the participants suggested a number of methods they often use to reduce anxiety including practicing writing in English and sharpening writing techniques; the more you write, the less anxious you feel, the better you write; not avoiding writing in English to build self-confidence; providing clear and sufficient feedback by teachers and allocating sufficient time for boosting writing skills and for introducing relevant techniques and vocabulary. They also pointed out that advancing their lexicon knowledge will help them recognise the appropriate words or phrases for writing in any given context and control their stress. They also suggest that accessing different supporting resources (e.g. virtual thesaurus, academic phrasebanks) in English classes will support and foster their writing, enhance its quality and make them feel more relaxed. These resources will make them feel more relaxed and control their concerns. Some of the participants mentioned that in order to control their anxiety, they work on expanding their motivation by forming a positive mindset when they are requested to write in English.

To conclude, the findings of the current study suggest that the participants suffered from high levels of anxiety in the in-classroom context, whilst they experienced low levels of anxiety in the outside-classroom context for different reasons. The impacts of the emerged sources of EFL writing anxiety in in-classroom and out-classroom contexts largely vary. The study captures some new methods of controlling writing anxiety from the learners’ perspectives. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications in the next section.

6. Limitations, implications and avenues for future research

The limitation of this study is that the sample is from a university in Saudi Arabia, which represents roughly higher-level proficiency and one gender only (i.e. females). Thus, the findings cannot represent the whole population of EFL learners in Saudi Arabia.

In the era of modern globalisation, interaction through English, including writing, has become inescapable. Affording ample courses of English writing within a stress-free setting has become the key concern of several teachers, curriculum developers and policy makers. Based on the achieved findings, this study recommends maintaining a learner-centred and less-threatening and anxiety-free environment to control and diminish EFL writing anxiety. To decrease the EFL writing anxiety levels triggered by, for instance, low self-confidence and fears of judgements from others including concerns over harmful evaluation, we support the recommendations of a number of researchers (e.g. [2, 3]) who proposed that instructor’s evaluation should be diminished and be substituted with peer-evaluation or self-evaluation. Although this method has been criticised by some scholars (e.g. Zhang [6] for being inefficient because teacher’s evaluation is highly appreciated by learners and the fact that peers are not qualified and their comments may be unclear and not beneficial. However, we suggest that learners can be trained on self-evaluation as well as peer-evaluation. Note that different proficiency levels must be considered when examining whether self-evaluation and peer-evaluation would be implemented or not.

Based on the achieved results, language instructors should acknowledge the significant influence of writing anxiety and find effective and innovative methods to diminish the consequences of EFL writing anxiety as possible. For instance, instructors must be trained on how to create and foster less-threatening and anxiety-free writings by offering more topics for writings that meet the learners’ different interests, allocating more time for writing, offering positive reinforcement before giving any instructive feedback, creating a more cooperative but not competitive class, practicing deep breathing, promoting a growth mindset and finally teaching through useful online games and encouraging learners to practice outside the classroom, which will help in controlling their anxiety and advancing their writings inside the classroom.

Finally, this study would be a fruitful area for further work. Considerably more work also will need to be done to evaluate the suggested pedagogical recommendations. Further research with mixed methods needs, for instance, to examine more closely the links between writing anxiety in different contexts and accessing supporting resources online.

7. Conclusions

Empirical evidence suggests that anxiety is considered an obstacle during the process of foreign language development, including writing anxiety. This paper attempts to investigate the levels of foreign language writing anxiety in the inside- vs. outside-classroom contexts among Arabic learners of English in Saudi Arabia. It also explores the sources of EFL writing anxiety and the potential remedies for reducing EFL writing anxiety from the learners’ perspectives. To achieve the study purposes, a total of 15 female English majors students at Taif University were interviewed in the study. The findings suggest that the learners suffered from high levels of anxiety in the in-classroom context, whilst they experienced low levels of anxiety in the outside-classroom context. This may have originated from the fact that classroom context entails severe anxiety-provoking factors such as fear of judgements from others including teacher’s evaluation, concerns over examinations and grading, time constraint, unfamiliar topics and so on. The participants justified the reasons for feeling less anxious when writing in the outside-classroom context that the aforementioned triggers do not exist or that some of them hardly occur when writing emails or posting blogs online, for instance. Besides, the outside-classroom context permits stress-free methods such as lack of perfection; writing on topics of their interests; accessing supporting resources online, which help in controlling their anxiety, and advancing their writing performance accordingly. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications.

Acknowledgments

The author is extremely thankful to the participants who took part in the current study.

Authors’ contributions

The author confirms sole responsibility for the following: study conception and design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, and manuscript preparation.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Competing interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest concerning the research, authorship, and/or publication of this research.

Consent for participation

All participants agreed to voluntarily participate in the study and signed consent forms.

Ethical Approval

This research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Taif University, Saudi Arabia (Application code: 45–006).

The author considered all the ethical procedures for involving human participants.

Availability of data and materials

The data is available upon request by contacting the author.

Appendix

Section 1: Biographical information

1. How old are you?

2. Do you speak any other languages? If any, how do you learn them? List them in order.

3. Have you spent time in an English-speaking country? (Where?/For how long?/What for?)

4. On a scale of 1–5, how would you rate your English writing proficiency?

Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5
Elementary	Low intermediate	High intermediate	Advanced	Proficient

Section 2: Interview questions

no.	Classroom Context	Low High
		1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
1	In
2	Out

1. Do you feel anxious while writing in English? (If yes) On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate your English writing anxiety inside and outside of English classrooms including palpitations, trembling, sweating, tenseness….etc.?

2. In your opinion, what are the anxiety-provoking triggers of writing inside and outside English classrooms?

3. What are the methods you often use to decrease your writing anxiety inside and outside English classrooms?