Writing Anxiety of Turkish Students: Scale Development and the Working Procedures in Terms of Various Variables
Author :
Abstract
This study was undertaken to develop a Writing Anxiety Scale that will assess and identify the state of writing anxiety in the primary education students. The process of creating the scale of the study in Sakarya studying in primary schools with 774 students carried out after the second stage, developed primary school students was administered to 480 scale. In this research construct validity, internal consistency and item-total correlations were examined. As a result of factor analysis for construct validity, one factor has emerged consist of 19 items, and account for the 30.5 % of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the one-factor model fitted the data (x2=557.54, sd=151, p=0.00). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the three-factor model fitted the data RMSEA=.059, CFI=.92, IFI=.92, GFI=.93, AGFI=.91 and SRMR=.050. The internal consistencies were .80 for entire scale. Findings also demonstrated that item-total correlations ranged from .30 to .52. According to these findings the Writing Anxiety Scale can be named as a valid and reliable instrument that could be used in the field of education. After the scale was developed in Sakarya studying in primary schools with 480 students carried out. Students receive their scores from Writing Anxiety Scale, the arithmetic mean and standard deviations were considered to be taken into consideration. In order to identify the effect of individual variables, t-test, one-way analysis of variance and LCD tests were used. Analysis showed that the variables of Turkish love of course, class, family income level, a number of books read per month and the smoothness of handwriting attended by students resulted in significant differences in student perceptions whereas the variable of gender did not affect the perceptions of students.Keywords
Abstract
This study was undertaken to develop a Writing Anxiety Scale that will assess and identify the state of writing anxiety in the primary education students. The process of creating the scale of the study in Sakarya studying in primary schools with 774 students carried out after the second stage, developed primary school students was administered to 480 scale. In this research construct validity, internal consistency and item-total correlations were examined. As a result of factor analysis for construct validity, one factor has emerged consist of 19 items, and account for the 30.5 % of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the one-factor model fitted the data (x2=557.54, sd=151, p=0.00). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the three-factor model fitted the data RMSEA=.059, CFI=.92, IFI=.92, GFI=.93, AGFI=.91 and SRMR=.050. The internal consistencies were .80 for entire scale. Findings also demonstrated that item-total correlations ranged from .30 to .52. According to these findings the Writing Anxiety Scale can be named as a valid and reliable instrument that could be used in the field of education. After the scale was developed in Sakarya studying in primary schools with 480 students carried out. Students receive their scores from Writing Anxiety Scale, the arithmetic mean and standard deviations were considered to be taken into consideration. In order to identify the effect of individual variables, t-test, one-way analysis of variance and LCD tests were used. Analysis showed that the variables of Turkish love of course, class, family income level, a number of books read per month and the smoothness of handwriting attended by students resulted in significant differences in student perceptions whereas the variable of gender did not affect the perceptions of students.Keywords
- Alport, R. ve Haber, R. N. (1980). Anxiety in academic achievement situations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 10, 207-215. Balcı, A. (2006). Sosyal bilimlerde araştırma: Yöntem, teknik ve iIlkeler. Ankara: Pegema Yayınları.
- Brand, A. G. ve Leckie, P. A. (1988). The emotions of professional writers. Journal of Psychology, 122(5), 421-439.
- Brown, J., Phillips, L. B ve Stephens, E. C. (1993). Toward literacy. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
- Bruning, R. ve Horn, C. (2000). Developing motivation to write. Educational Psychologist, 35(1), 25–37.
- Büyüköztürk, Ş. (2004). Veri analizi el kitabı. Ankara: Pegem A Yayıncılık.
- Büyüköztürk, Ş., Akgün, Ö., Kahveci, Ö. ve Demirel, F. (2004). Güdülenme ve öğrenme stratejileri ölçeği’nin Türkçe formunun geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması. Kuram ve Uygulamada Eğitim Bilimleri, 4(2), 207-239.
- Cemiloğlu, M. (2001). Dil bilimi açısından Türkçe yazılı anlatım ve anlatım teknikleri öğretimi. İstanbul: Alfa Yayınları.
- Cheng, Y. S. (1998). A Qualitative inquiry of second language anxiety: interviews with Taiwanese EFL students. In J. Katchen ve Y. Liung (Eds.), The Proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on English Teaching (pp. 309-320). Taipei, Taiwan: Crane Publishing.
- Cheng, Y. S. (2004). A measure of second language writing anxiety: scale development and preliminary validation. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 313-335.
- Cohen, Y. ve Norst, M. J. (1989). Fear, dependence, and loss of self-esteem: affective barriers in second language learning among adults. RELC Journal, 20, 61-77.
- Fritzsche, B. A., Young, B. R ve Hickson, K. C. (2003). Individual differences in academic procrastination tendency and writing success. Personality and Individual Differences 35, 1549–1557.
- Gönen, İ. K. (2005). İngilizce’yi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen Türk öğrencilerin yabancı dilde okuma kaygılarının kaynakları. Yayınlanmamış doktora tezi. Anadolu Üniversitesi Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü. Eskişehir.
- Gotlib, I. H., Gilboa, E. ve Sommerfeld, B. K. (2000). Cognitive functioning in depression: nature. R. J. Davidson (Ed.), Anxiety, depression, and emotion (pp. 133–163). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Graves, D. H. (1994). A fresh look at writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
- Hogan, M. P. (1985). Writing as punishment. The English Journal, 74(5), 40-42.
- Hu, L. T. ve Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structural analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1-55.
- Kantemir, E. (1997). Yazılı ve sözlü anlatım. Ankara: Engin Yayınları.
- Kellogg, R. T. (1999). Psychology of writing. USA: Oxford University Press.
- Kloss, J. D. ve Lisman, S. A. (2002). An exposure-based examination of the effects of written emotional disclosure. British Journal of Health Psychology, 7, 31–46.
- Kurt, G. ve Atay, D. (2007). The effects of peer feedback on the writing anxiety of prospective Turkish teachers of EFL. Journal of Theory and Practice in Education, 3(1), 12-23.
- MacIntyre, P. D., Noels, K. A. ve Clément, R. (1997). Biases in Self-ratings of Second Language Proficiency: The Role of Language Anxiety. Language Learning, 47, 265-287.
- Öztürk, H. ve Çeçen, S. (2007). The effects of portfolio keeping on writing anxiety of EFL students. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 3(2), 218-236.
- Pajares, F. (2003). Self-efficacy beliefs, motivation, and achievement in writing: a review of the literature. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 19, 139-158.
- Pajares, M. F. ve Johnson, M. J. (1993). Confidence and competence in writing: The role of self- efficacy, outcome expectancy, and apprehension. The Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Atlanta, GA.
- Petzel, T. P. ve Wenzel, M. U. (1993). Development and initial evaluation of measure of writing anxiety. American Psychological Association Convention, Toronto, Canadia. Price, M. L. (1991). The subjective experiences of foreign language anxiety: Interviews with anxious students. in E. K. Horwitz ve D. J. Young (Eds.), Language Anxiety: From Theory and Research to Classroom Implications (pp. 101-108). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- Routman, R. (1996). Literacy at the crossroads: Crucial talk about reading, writing, and other teaching dilemmas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
- Sawkins, M. W. (1971). The oral responses of selected fifth grade children to questions concerning their writing expression. Buffalo, NY: Buffalo State University of New York.
- Scovel, T. (1978). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: A review of anxiety research. Language Learning, 28, 129-142.
- Sharples, M. (1998). How we write: Writing as creative design. London, UK: Routledge.
- Sloan, D. M, Feinstein, B. A. ve Marx, B. P. (2009). Durability of beneficial health effects associated with expressive writing. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 1-15.
- Sloan, D. M. ve Marx, B. P. (2004). A closer examination of the structured written disclosure procedure. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 165-175.
- Smyth, J. M. (1998). Written emotional expression: effect sizes, outcome types, and moderating variables. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 66, 174-184. Sommers, N. (1994). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. In S. Perl (Ed.), Landmark essays on writing process (pp. 75-84). Davis, CA: Heragoras Press.
- Tabachnick, B. G. ve Fidell, L. S. (1996). Using multivariate statistics. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers.
- Taghavi, R., Neshat-Doost, H., Moradi, A., Yule, W. ve Dalgleish, T. (1999). Biases in visual attention in children and adolescents with clinical anxiety and mixed-anxietydepression. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 27, 215–223.
- TDK (2009). Büyük Türkçe sözlük. İnternetten 02 Aralık 2009’da elde edilmiştir. http://tdkterim.gov.tr/bts/?kategori=verilst&kelime=kayg%FD&ayn=tam
- Thompson, M. O. (1981). A workshop: coping with writing anxiety. Post-Conference Workshop of the National Council of Teachers of English, Minneapolis, MN.
- Truitt, S. N. (1995). Anxiety and beliefs about language learning: A study of Korean university students learning English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
- Vasey, M. W., Daleiden, E. L., Williams, L. L. ve Brown, L. M. (1995). Biased attention in childhood anxiety disorders: a preliminary study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 23, 267–279.
- Vasey, M. W., El-Hag, N. ve Daleiden, E. L. (1996). Anxiety and the processing of emotionally threatening stimuli: Distinctive patterns of selective attention among high- and low-test-anxious children. Child Development, 67, 1173–1185.