Investigating Writing Anxiety among Kurdish EFL Learners at the University Level

Abstract

Writing in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts has been claimed to be one of the most challenging tasks required by EFL learners. Many Kurdish learners of EFL face difficulties producing well-developed paragraphs and essays in their courses of study in higher education. Writing anxiety is one of the most common difficulties among many EFL learners all over the world. However, the factors leading to it could vary from one community to another. This study aimed to investigate writing anxiety among Kurdish learners of EFL at the university level. A mixed-method research approach is employed to conduct the study. The instruments used for data collection were a questionnaire distributed among EFL learners and semi-structured interviews conducted with writing instructors. The participants were 200 university EFL learners and 10 writing instructors who were randomly selected from four universities in Iraq and Kurdistan. The results revealed that factors such as little school background in writing, incompetency in English grammar and lexicon, time limitation, and poor or negative feedback from the side of instructors caused anxiety among EFL learners.