What is Writing Anxiety

The chapter explores the impact of freewriting on university students' foreign language writing boredom and anxiety in online academic writing classes. Fifty-nine students majoring in English language teaching participated in the study. The equivalent time samples design was used in the study for 10 weeks during which the participants had a freewriting activity every other week. Pre- and post-writing boredom and anxiety surveys, a semantic differential scale, and students' reflections were collected as data. The results indicated a significant decrease in students' boredom and an increase in their anxiety. Weekly analyses of students' responses revealed that students' boredom showed a decreasing trend, and it was continuously lower in the weeks with freewriting activities. However, students' anxiety fluctuated. Thematic analysis was employed to identify recurring themes and categories in students' reflection papers indicating boredom and anxiety increasing and decreasing factors.