Exploring the relationship between writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy of international students learning Turkish as a second language

Abstract

The purpose of this correlational study was to explore the relationship between writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy levels of international students learning Turkish as a second language. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 204 international students through “Writing Anxiety Scale for Learners of Turkish as a Foreign Language Scale”, “Writing Self-Efficacy Scale for Students Learning Turkish as a Foreign Language” and a personal information form. In the analyses of the data, descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis-H test, Spearman's Rank-Difference Coefficients of Correlation were used. In this study, international students were found to have medium levels of writing anxiety and high levels of writing self-efficacy. Analyses indicated that male students had higher levels of action-oriented writing anxiety than female students. It was also found that doctoral students had higher levels of action-oriented writing anxiety than undergraduate students. Lastly, it was determined that there was a low and positive correlation between international students' writing self-efficacy and action-oriented writing anxiety.

Keywords: writing, anxiety, self-efficacy, Turkish as a second language