Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 73-82
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.208 73
A
LLEVIATION OF
P
SYCHOLOGICAL
A
NXIETY OF
C
OLLEGE
E
NGLISH
L
EARNERS IN
W
RITING THROUGH
B
LENDED
T
EACHING
Chunyi Zhou
Abstract
The psychological anxiety in English writing directly affects the writing performance of English learners. This paper aims to clarify the level of psychological anxiety of English majors in writing, and evaluates the ability of blended teaching to alleviate the anxiety. Therefore, a questionnaire survey was carried out among 124 English majors that had received traditional teaching of English writing for one semester. Their attitudes to English writing and teaching method were analyzed based on the survey results. Then, two classes of English majors were selected for a comparative experiment, with one class receiving the blended teaching of English writing and the other, the traditional teaching method. The anxiety and performance in English writing of both classes were measured before and after the experiment. The results show that most students receiving traditional teaching of English writing had severe psychological anxiety in finishing writing tasks; blended teaching provides English majors a secure and flexible learning environment, which significantly alleviates their psychological anxiety in all dimensions: somatic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety. The research results show a new direction for English teaching reform in colleges.
Key words: Psychological Anxiety, College English Learners, Writing, Blended Teaching. Received: 15-03-19 | Accepted: 08-09-19
INTRODUCTION
Anxiety is a psychological word. Many scholars have made a systematic study about the cause of anxiety and the effect on other cognitive abilities such as esteem, self-efficacy etc. Sigmund Freud is a pioneer in anxiety research. He has explained that anxiety is generated in an individual psychology resulting from the conflict between the outside stimulus and human’s self-evaluation. Cai Fei has
mentioned Freud’s two critical stages in the
development of anxiety: the first stage is primary anxiety; the second stage is subsequent anxiety.
The primary anxiety comes from human self’s
impotence to satisfy the mountains of outside
libido, causing the human self’s strong
psychological pains and anxiety. The subsequent anxiety results from the human individual strong
Ankang University, Ankang 725000, China. E-Mail: [email protected]
self-protecting mechanism against the repeated painful experiences. The difference between these two anxieties lies in the cognitive ability to identify the instinctive needs and outside environment, thus actively building up the inside self-protecting mechanism. After comparing
Jackbson’s anxiety theory with other
psychologists’ anxiety theory such as Freud,
Horney and Sullivan, Cai Fei proposed a critical view about anxiety in which anxiety is suggested to include four factors: stimulus, self-esteem, cognitive evaluation and ability. What’s more, it
is advised that anxiety is social emotion and self-esteem has social features because self-self-esteem is achieved in the context of interpersonal communication. Based on the statements above, it can be seen that anxiety not only originates from its self, but also from outside stimulus. The most significant part is that the self has the ability to evaluate whether oneself has the ability to fight against the threat from inside or outside stimulus. In other words, it means that
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human has the cognitive ability to judge whether the self-esteem has been challenged. If they figure out that they cannot protect themselves from the damage to their self-esteem, they will be obsessed with anxiety.
English writing is also a complex cognitive psychological process. Anxiety is a factor to affect English writing. But it is thought that anxiety in a general sense is distinct from writing anxiety because writing anxiety is generated in a
specific situation. Writing anxiety
(apprehension) is proposed by Daly & Miller (1975) in which it is defined as the psychological anxiety coming from writing process such as avoiding writing tasks, bothering the peers’
comment. English writing as a foreign language writing is in a non-native language environment. It is much easier to cause writing anxiety. Hence, Cheng (2004) develops the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), specializing in measuring foreign language writing anxiety. According to writing as a Process Approach, writing is not considered as a final product but as a process. During this process, the students can show self-evaluated cognitive ability to writing stimulus and get self-regulating over writing stimulus. Therefore, self-concept and self-esteem are important parts in forming or
decreasing the anxiety. To decrease
psychological anxiety in English writing, the writing stimulus is suggested to be put in a favorable situation, which can push students to cultivate a good concept and a good self-esteem. Many scholars have studied the causes for writing anxiety and the correlation between writing anxiety and writing achievements. For example, Guo (2018) makes a systematic study on the mediating role of writing anxiety in the aspects of self-concept and self-efficacy. His research results show that concept and self-efficacy have significant positive correlation with English writing performance which writing anxiety is significantly and negatively related to. The second implication is that EFL writing self-concept and self-efficacy, mediated by writing anxiety, have indirect positive effects on writing performance.
Based on the review of anxiety and writing anxiety, it is found that anxiety and writing anxiety share the similar features, but they are generated by different outside stimulus and different situations. Therefore, writing anxiety is a special phenomenon, and needs specific research focus and methodology. Scholars have
done many related empirical studies on the impact of writing anxiety and the strategies to mediate writing anxiety to ensure better writing performance. But their researches stress the correlation between writing anxiety and writing achievements; their studies is mostly restricted in traditional teaching environment. As the internet technology spreads into English teaching, it is necessary to modify the research focus and extend the research subjects. Blended teaching is a new trend in education, which combines the online course platform with face-to-face instruction. Therefore, this paper aims to use questionnaire to figure out the anxiety category in English writing of English major students and testify how to reduce their psychological anxiety in writing with the aid of blended teaching.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theoretical basis
Humanistic psychological approach
Humanistic psychology emerged during the 1950s as a reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanistic psychology focused on the individual’s potential and emphasized the significance of growth and self-actualization. The early development of humanistic psychology was greatly affected by the two major theorists: Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers. Both Rogers and Maslow considered personal growth and fulfillment in life as a basic human motive. It means that each individual tries to grow psychologically and constantly improve themselves. This approach stresses the idea that everyone can contribute to improving their own mental and physical health. Besides, it also supports that environmental factors are very important to shape human personal experience. Rogers redirected psychology to the study of the self because he thought that the focus of psychology should be how the individual human perceives and interpret the events instead of behavior or the human brain itself. Rogers is well-known for his theory of personality, which focuses on a self-concept, or a person’s perceptions and beliefs about himself. He proposed that self-concept consists of three elements: self-esteem, self-image and ideal self. Maslow is another founding figure in humanistic psychology, who initiated the hierarchy of human needs to explain the different levels of human needs. The following table1 will show the
ALLEVIATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ANXIETY OF COLLEGE ENGLISH LEARNERS IN WRITING THROUGH BLENDED TEACHING 75
pyramid of human needs.
The Figure1 suggests that Hierarchy of Human Needs has five levels from the most basic bottom level of physiological needs to the top highest level of self-actualization needs. This pyramid structure of human needs shows three types of needs. The first two physiological needs and safety needs are the basic needs. The next two belongingness needs and esteem needs are psychological needs. The top-level self-actualization is self-fulfillment need. The Maslow’s idea about human needs give significant implication to foreign language learning. The traditional foreign language teaching revolves the teacher’s plan and ignores the student’s individual psychological condition or needs. Therefore, it is quite common that the students lose the chance to realize the self-actualization. The teacher needs to cultivate a favorable learning environment in which the students can build up a sense of safety and intimate relationship among their classmates. Then, they are encouraged to get a self-esteem and stimulate their creative potentiality. Therefore, if they cannot be given a favorable environment, they will be surrounded by a strong sense of anxiety which decrease their participation in the learning activity. Rogers also proposes that a high self-esteem is guaranteed by “unconditional positive regard”. It means that if the learners accept a threatening signal from their peers or their teachers, their self-esteem will be threatened. Consequently, their self-reliance and creativity are damaged. In a general conclusion, humanistic psychological approach emphasizes the individual’s concept or self-esteem and self-actualization.
Figure 1
.
Diagrammatic sketch of research
method
Basic concept of psychological anxiety and language anxiety
English Writing is an important output capability in Foreign language learning. It is involved in a complex psychological process, which is affected by several factors:
self-concept, outside teaching stimulus,
interpersonal relation in a group etc. In the traditional English writing class, students’ role is ignored and their psychological factor in writing is not noticed. The teacher mainly focuses on instructing writing skills to students in a unilateral way. Since the 1970s, writing as a
Process Approach was attached much
importance. Zamel (1983) put forward that writing is a nonlinear, exploratory, and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning. So it is clear that during writing process, students need to make recursive psychological cognitive monitoring. The psychological factors will directly affect their writing performance. Of those psychological factors, writing anxiety is a significant factor to determine their writing performance. It is necessary to introduce the basic concept of anxiety and writing anxiety.
Anxiety is a psychological concept. Karen Daniels Horney has defined anxiety in which anxiety is a kind of subjective feeling of loneliness and hopelessness when an individual person lives in a hostile community. Cai Fei made comparative analysis of Jacckbson, Freud, Horney and Sullivan in anxiety theory, commenting that Jackbson developed Freud’s anxiety signal theory and suggested that anxiety includes four factors: stimulus, self, ability and cognitive evaluation. Scovel (1978) explained anxiety as the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension and nervousness associated with a sense of threat of danger when the origin of danger is not known. This definition is quite close to Freud’s explanation of anxiety. These definitions clearly show that anxiety is a kind of negative psychological response to uncertain outside threat.
Language anxiety is different from any other anxiety. It arises from the fact that when second or foreign language learners are required to use the target language to finish relevant tasks such as listening, speaking and writing, they feel a psychological conflict and get a low self-evaluation. Then, they try to avoid the task and feel frustrated about themselves. The causes for
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this low self-concept may come from their inner experience and language ability, but also may result from the outside stimulus such as the learning environment and the peer’s evaluation. Krashen suggests that anxiety hinders the learner’ s ability to process the language input and there is a link among anxiety, task difficulties and ability. Schlesiger (1995) detailed causes of the second language anxiety into 3 types: language factor, external factor and internal factor. He proposed that when second language learners are required to use second language to finish a task, one’s self-concept is challenged, which inclines to cause one’s uncertainty and triggers one’s anxiety. External factor mainly refers to the learning environment in which the teacher’s instruction and their peer’s comment work together to give influence to second language learners’ self-evaluation. If the teacher constructs an open and free learning environment, the students feel safety to express themselves. Their self-concept is in a positive condition, which decreases their anxiety from teachers’ guided learning environment. The anxiety is also generated from the struggle between the student’s self-concept of correctness in language expression and the unacceptability of uncertainty. In a sum, anxiety and language anxiety both reflect the individual negative psychological emotion or response to the uncertain external stimulus. The major difference between these two is that language anxiety is produced from a specific foreign language learning environment.
Previous studies
Daly & Miller (1975) imitatively made a definition about writing apprehension or anxiety in which writing apprehension is the anxious behavior shown from the language learners during the writing process, including following anxious behaviors: avoid the writing task and worry the peer’s evaluation on their writing product etc. Daly & Wilson (1983) suggested that writing anxiety is not an ordinary psychological anxiety, but it is a stronger anxiety or horror. Writing anxiety may shift the learner’s attention and damage the quality for their writing product. Writing anxiety is much easier to be generated in the context of foreign language writing because the language learners have to finish writing task by using foreign language instead of native language. Based on this situation, Cheng (2004) designed Second Language Writing Anxiety
Inventory (SLWAI), specializing in measuring writing anxiety in foreign language. His research result shows that there are three key factors to measure foreign language writing anxiety in which they are somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety and avoidance behavior. Based on their research achievements, many experts have made systematic study on the causes of foreign language writing anxiety, corresponding strategies to reduce writing anxiety and the correlation between writing anxiety and writing achievements.
Cheng, Horwitz, & Schallert (1999) made a research about the relation between second language classroom anxiety and second language writing anxiety as well as their connections with second language speaking and writing achievement. Their research suggests that second language classroom anxiety and second language writing anxiety are closely related but independent in which there are different constructs for these two. Their results also reveal that the former is much more general than second language writing anxiety, which is a language-skill-specific anxiety. It further shows that the low confidence may cause both second language classroom anxiety and second language writing anxiety.
Cheng (2002) investigated the factors associated with foreign language writing anxiety. The empirical analysis has been adopted in the research. The research results indicate that perceived L2 writing competence predicts L2 writing anxiety better than L2 writing achievement does. It also testifies that gender plays an important role in the level of L2 writing anxiety in which female students show a higher level of L2 writing anxiety than male students do. But there is no significant difference among freshmen, sophomores and juniors in the level of writing anxiety. And it further suggests that it is important to cultivate the students’ positive and
realistic understanding of their writing competence.
Wu & Gu (2011) used the SLWAI to investigate the effects of cooperative learning in decreasing the non-English major students’
English writing anxiety. Their study reveals that non-English major students have a high level of English writing anxiety. The empirical study result testifies that cooperative learning can effectively reduce the students’ somatic anxiety and comprehensive anxiety and evaluation anxiety, but it had no significant impact on
ALLEVIATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ANXIETY OF COLLEGE ENGLISH LEARNERS IN WRITING THROUGH BLENDED TEACHING 77
avoidance behavior and confidence anxiety. Wu & Gu (2011) employed SLWAI to check the effect of peer review on college students’ writing anxiety. The result suggests that peer review can effectively decrease students’ somatic anxiety, avoidance behavior, general anxiety and cognitive anxiety.
Some scholars took questionnaire and interview as tools to investigate the EFL writer’s blocks and writing anxiety that Chinese non-English major postgraduates often have in English writing. Their study shows that writer’s block and writing anxiety are prevalent among the postgraduates; the main sources of writer’s block and writing anxiety are personal factors, English skills, teacher factor, Chinese writing proficiency and English writing purposes. The writer’s English writing anxiety consists of four major factors: conceptual-construction anxiety, class anxiety, avoidance behavior and confidence anxiety (Guo, 2013).
Li (2015) testified the causal relationship between college English writing anxiety and writing performance. The research result revealed that there is a significant change in writing anxiety and writing performance after non-English major students accepted one semester of English writing course. The writing performance has significantly been improved but the general writing anxiety at the beginning of the semester negatively predicted their writing performance at the end of the semester. But the writing performance at the beginning of the semester cannot significantly predict the writing anxiety at the end of the semester. In conclusion, writing anxiety is a source of factor to affect the writing performance.
Guo (2018) used structural equation modeling to examine the relationship among EFL writing self-concept, self-efficacy, writing anxiety and writing performance. The study indicated that English writing self-concept and self-efficacy has a significant positive correlation with writing performance; writing anxiety is in a significant negative correlation with writing performance; self-concept and self-efficacy have indirect positive influence to writing performance with the mediation of writing anxiety.
Based on the review of related studies about writing anxiety, it can be found that most scholars selected non-English major students as their research subjects and mainly made empirical studies on the correlation between
writing anxiety and writing performance. As the blended teaching (online course platform plus face-to-face teaching) tends to spread into college English teaching, the learning environment starts to get changed in which there is a dramatic change to the relationship between the teacher and the student, between the students themselves. This will help students to finish their learning tasks in a much easier and
harmonious environment. Humanistic
psychology focused on the individual’s potential and emphasized the significance of growth and self-actualization. Both Maslow and Rogers suggested that self-concept or self-esteem is a central part in individual’s psychological growth and self-actualization. The blended teaching creates a self-centered learning environment. Therefore, this paper aims to figure out what kinds of writing anxiety English major students have and how the blended teaching can help them to alleviate their psychological anxiety in English writing.
Research questions
Based on the humanistic psychological theory and previous studies, it is clear that external stimulus can be an influential factor to change the learner’s psychological cognition and refine their self-concept, improving their writing performance. Schlesiger (1995) classified source of the second language anxiety into 3 types: language factor, external factor and internal factor. This paper tries to detail external factor as the learning environment the teacher has created in English writing class and the interpersonal relationship between the peers. Furthermore, the internal factor refers to the students’ self-concept about writing. Blended teaching provided students with a flexible writing environment: self-study in the online course platform plus face-to-face teaching. This paper proposes the following two research questions:
1.What kind of psychological anxiety do the English major students have in English writing? 2.Can blended teaching significantly alleviate their psychological anxiety in English writing?
Research design Participants
According to English writing course plan, four classes are selected in which 124 English major students have received one semester’s English writing class in traditional teaching. According to
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the classroom performance in the first semester, the students seem to be passive in class and be forced to finish writing tasks. The teacher designed a questionnaire to investigate their attitude to English writing and the teaching methodology. The results show that they feel the traditional class focuses on teaching the writing skills to students and they cannot finish a writing product as the models the teacher has provided. Consequently, when they are required to finish a spontaneous writing task, they have a strong psychological anxiety. Based on this situation, the writing reform program starts with the aid of online course platform in which blended teaching can be carried out in the new semester. These 122 students are all second-year college students in English major of AnKang University. Two classes are total 59 students who will be classified as control group in which traditional teaching is employed in English writing class. Another two classes consist of 63 students who will be classified as experiment group because blended teaching will be put into use. Before the research is made, the students from control group and experiment group need to be compared in their mean score of integrative English at final exam. The scores will be analyzed in software SPSS22.0. The following table 1 will show the result of integrative English, which indicates that there is no significant difference between experiment group and control group in English proficiency.
Table1.
The score of English test
Group Number Mean
score
Standard Deviation
P-Value Experiment
Group 63 70.25 8.645
0.697
Control
Group 59 69.95 8.617
Research Instrument
The research instrument is based on Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (Cheng, 2004). Founded on the previous scholars’
studies, Cheng revised part of the elements to form a new SLWAI to specialize in testing foreign language writing anxiety. The SLWAI has been tested to be highly reliable and valid, which consists of 22 items and is ranked with Likert 5-Scale from the item “completely disagree” to the item “completely agree”, respectively graded from 1 point to 5 points. The total score from these 22 items will be the value of psychological
anxiety. The total score should range from 22 points to 110 points. The higher the score is, the higher the level of anxiety means. According to the study (Wu & Gu, 2011), their research has used the experiment to pick out four valid factors to measure English writing anxiety, which are semantic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety. The humanistic psychological theory has illustrated self-concept of self-esteem as central part to an individual psychological growth and achieve self-actualization. Therefore, this paper employs their research measurement tool and makes reference to their four key factors to check English major students’ psychological anxiety in English writing.
Research procedure
Before the blended teaching is put into practice, the SLWAI are sent to all the participants including experiment group and control group. After 16 weeks’ blended teaching, all the participants finish filling the SLWAI once again. Then, the data is collected from the SLWAI twice. All the data are put into software SPSS22.0, which are calculated to measure the types of psychological anxiety in English writing and to testify whether blended teaching can significantly alleviate their psychological anxiety in English writing.
The experiment group will be taught in blended teaching in which self-study in the online writing platform is combined with face-to-face teaching, while the control group will be taught in the traditional teaching in which the teacher analyzes the samples and the writing skills in the class and the students finish writing tasks after class. Before the new lesson is started, the experiment group need to finish the task-based reading materials and answer the relevant questions in the online writing platform, which can train the students to get a well-prepared topic material and to get a logic analysis of the writing materials by themselves. In the online writing platform, students and teacher can make interaction between each other about the difficult points. According to the interaction and discussion in the online platform, the teacher designs the strengthened online practice to help the students to get the point. In the class, the teacher gives more topics to discuss in groups and finish writing tasks in class. When they finish writing, they send their writing products into online writing platform, the teacher train
ALLEVIATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ANXIETY OF COLLEGE ENGLISH LEARNERS IN WRITING THROUGH BLENDED TEACHING 79
themselves to evaluate their peer’s writing product. Then, the teacher picks out some typical writing products to give her individual comments in class. After that, the students need to revise their writing products according to their peers’
comment and the teacher’s feedback. Finally, they post their revised writing products to the writing assignment module in the online writing platform. The control group follows the same topic and schedule in which the teaching focuses on the teacher’s analysis of samples and writing techniques and the students write only one draft. The table 2 shows the specific steps about blended teaching in English writing class.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the SLWAI (Cheng, 2004) and the four key subfactors (Wu & Gu, 2011) to measure foreign language writing Anxiety, this research uses this questionnaire to test both experiment group and control group before the blended teaching is put into practice. After the blended teaching is finished in 16 weeks (2 hours per week), the questionnaire is once more sent to both groups. We collect 63 valid questionnaires from experiment group and get 59 valid
questionnaires from control group. The data will be transferred into software SPSS22.0. The results will be shown in the following tables.
The table 3 shows that the control group within the traditional teaching has no significant difference (P>0.05) among the four factors: semantic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety, which are used to show the aspects of psychological anxiety English major students have. The mean score suggests that evaluation anxiety is in the highest position among those four factors; self-confidence anxiety lies in the second place. It indicates that traditional teaching in English writing puts the teacher and the samples as the central part, but ignores the student’s active participation and processing information ability in which there is no peer’s revision and interactive activities. It means that students have been excluded from the activities. They have no enough prewriting stages to construct the idea and the organizational structure. Therefore, when they are given a topic to write, they feel too sudden to organize their idea. As a result, they cannot give any meaningful evaluation to themselves and their peers. It is natural that their self-confidence is strongly
Table 2.
The procedure of Blended teaching
Writing
procedure Online writing platform Face-to-face teaching
Prewriting
Provide writing materials and relevant questions; students finish by themselves through interaction between peers or with the teacher; prepare the
writing material to their writing tasks.
Design class activities to clarify the difficult points shown in the online platform.
First and second draft
Send their first and second draft to online writing assignment module; the teacher gives her comment
to some typical writing products.
Help students to figure out the general organization; guide the possible direction to the
topic; train them how to evaluate their peers’
writing product; finish writing task Final writing
product Post their revised writing products. Summarize the major points.
Table 3.
Comparative analysis of the Questionnaire Data from Control Group
Factor of psychological anxiety in English writing
Pretest or posttest
Number of students
Mean
score SD
T-Value
P-Value
Somatic Anxiety pretest 59 12.56 3.12 0.178 0.253
post-test 59 12.24 3.03
Evaluation Anxiety pretest 59 25.49 1.29 0.332 0.196
post-test 59 25.47 1.12
Avoidance Behavior pretest 59 15.32 2.25 0.264 0.216
post-test 59 15.35 2.32
Self-confidence Anxiety pretest 59 18.76 1.09 0.867 0.087
post-test 59 18.78 1.12
Total Anxiety pretest 59 72.13 7.89 1.038 0.071
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damaged. Maslow and Rogers have proposed that if an individual aim to make self-actualization, one has to ensure a high level of self-esteem and get a harmonious learning environment. But the traditional teaching disregards the students’ psychological needs and does not create an interactive pleasant learning environment. They finish their writing task in a hasty and nervous psychology. It is inevitable for them to have a higher evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety, which directly increases avoidance behavior. In a general word, the control group show a high level of psychological anxiety in English writing, which is shown in the following four factors: semantic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety. Especially, evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety are located in the highest level of psychological anxiety. But there is no significant difference between the pretest and posttest, indicating that traditional teaching cannot reduce psychological anxiety in English writing. In addition, to answer the two research questions, it is necessary to show the data from experiment group in the following table 4.
The table4 reveals that after the blended teaching is put into use in English writing, there is a significant decrease (P<0.05) in the value of total anxiety and four factors of psychological anxiety in English writing. In the pretest, the mean score suggests that evaluation anxiety is in the highest position and self-confidence anxiety is numbered in the second place. As has been explained above, traditional teaching in English writing has separated their students’
psychological inner needs and doesn’t create a pleasant learning environment in which the students have a low self-confidence. After the blended teaching is practiced, the P value shows
a significant reduction in the total anxiety, evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety. The blended teaching combines the students’
self-study in the online writing platform with face-to-face instruction in which students are encouraged to reflect on the questions from the online writing materials and to give some comments on some writing samples in terms of questions. To figure out the answers, they are suggested to make interaction with the teacher and their peers in the discussion modules of online writing platform. Through the online interaction and discussion, the students are
provided with a harmonious learning
environment and get an independent thinking about the writing materials. During the process of face-to-face instruction, the teacher guide the students to clarify the possible direction in writing topic and organization, which pushes the students well-prepared for writing drafts in the prewriting stage. This can ensure the students a secure feeling. The research (Wu & Gu, 2011) has pointed out that cooperative learning created a free and less-pressured learning environment to the students, greatly decreasing the pressure of non-English major students in English writing. This research result gets the similar conclusion that less-pressured and pleasant learning environment gives the students opportunity to fully participate in the prewriting stage and have a higher level of self-confidence and evaluation ability in English writing. Therefore, it is natural that the blended teaching can significantly alleviate the English major students’
psychological anxiety in English writing, which is detailed in total anxiety, evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety.
Based on the data results in table3 and table4, it indicates that English major students
Table 4.Comparative analysis of the Questionnaire Data from Experiment Group
Factor of psychological anxiety in English writing
Pretest or posttest
Number of students
Mean
score SD
T-Value
P-Value
Somatic Anxiety pretest 63 12.49 2.98 0.598 0.172
post-test 63 11.03 2.78
Evaluation Anxiety pretest 63 25.65 1.32 2.937 0.003
post-test 63 21.47 1.02
Avoidance Behavior pretest 63 15.34 2.45 0.899 0.094
post-test 63 13.54 2.76
Self-confidence Anxiety pretest 63 18.59 1.06 1.167 0.054
post-test 63 16.52 1.04
Total Anxiety pretest 63 72.07 7.81 2.023 0.022
ALLEVIATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ANXIETY OF COLLEGE ENGLISH LEARNERS IN WRITING THROUGH BLENDED TEACHING 81
have a higher psychological anxiety in English writing, which is mainly shown in the four factors: somatic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety. Of these four factors, the evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety are respectively located in the highest position. The blended teaching can significantly alleviate their total psychological anxiety(P<0.05) in English writing. The previous studies (Schlesiger, 1995) have shown that the external factor is an important part to affect the level of language anxiety in which external factor mainly refers to the learning environment the teacher has created. The open and pleasant learning environment gives students a relaxed psychological cognition. The study (Richards, Jack, Richards et al., 1994) claimed that the increasing interaction between the peers is conducive to the well-constructed emotion and to the mutual trust, helping to reduce psychological anxiety. The blended teaching built up an open and relaxed learning environment in which students can make an active interaction between the teacher and the students or between the peers in the online writing-related materials and questions. They don’t need to feel nervous or ashamed to finish the writing tasks because the online interaction gives them a well-prepared writing material to guarantee that they get a high level of safety and self-esteem or self-confidence in English writing. In the face-to-face teaching, they are classified into group to be trained to comment their peer’s works and are guided to clarify the difficult points in the online writing platform. They have been provided with well-guided instruction for writing task. Therefore, when they are asked to finish a spontaneous writing task, they have a higher self-confidence about it. The data supported this point in which experiment group with blended teaching has significantly alleviated their total anxiety, evaluation anxiety and self-confidence anxiety. Maslow has addressed that self-esteem is a key factor to ensure the self-actualization. Only when the students get a secure feeling and have a higher self-esteem in learning, they can monitor their information-processing capability to figure out how to organize their idea and how to evaluate themselves to their peers. It is quite necessary that blended teaching effectively decreased their psychological anxiety in English writing.
CONCLUSION
The previous studies have testified that psychological anxiety in English writing is highly correlated with the students’ writing performances. Some studies have focused on the external factors to reduce the non-English major students’ psychological anxiety in English writing. Schlesiger (1995) explained the sources of the second language anxiety into 3 types: language factor, external factor and internal factor. Blended teaching is an important external factor to construct the interactive and guided self-learning environment, which stimulates the students to reflect on the writing -related questions in a relaxed and pleasant environment. They can give their critical evaluation to their peers’ works. Online interactive discussion is helpful to release their nervous feeling they have been in the face-to-face traditional teaching. Their self-concept has been strengthened so that their self-confidence is increased. Their self-confidence anxiety is significantly reduced. The blended teaching created the opportunity for them to appreciate the critical comments on their peers’ writing products. Hence, when they are required to make comment on their peers’ works, they have well-prepared and have a higher confidence. It is natural that their evaluation anxiety is highly decreased. Maslow has stated clearly in his hierarchy of human needs that belongingness and self-esteem are important factors to ensure the individual self-actualization. Blended teaching provided English-major students with a secure and flexible learning environment, which ultimately gets a significant alleviation to their psychological anxiety in the following four factors: somatic anxiety, evaluation anxiety, avoidance behavior and self-confidence anxiety.
Acknowledgement
This paper was supported by Foundation for Higher level Talents in Ankang University, 2019AYQDZR01.
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