A case study: University students' conceptions of writing apprehension

A number of research has been conducted to be able to find out students' foreign language writing anxiety and the present study aimed at finding out preparatory school students' conceptions of writing apprehension. It was conducted with 48 participants who studied at Toros University, Mersin, Turkey. An inventory called SLWAI (Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory) adapted by Cheng (2004) with three sub-categories; cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and avoidance behavior and three open-ended questions were used to measure students' writing apprehension levels. The data were analysed through descriptive and content analysis and the results of the SLWAI and the comments of the students on the three open-ended questions showed that students experienced moderate levels of writing anxiety. Students experienced the highest apprehension levels regarding the Avoidance Behavior and those who experienced Avoidance Behaviour stated that they abstained from writing in English because they had difficulties with learning how to write in English.