THE CORRELATION BETWEEN WRITING ANXIETY AND WRITING SKILLS AMONG 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT SMAN 2 KEDIRI IN THE 2025/2026 ACADEMIC YEAR
Keywords:
writing anxiety, academic writing perfomance, cognitive apprehension, SLWAI, EFLAbstract
This study investigates the relationship between foreign language writing anxiety and academic writing performance among tenth-grade students at SMAN 2 Kediri. Employing a quantitative descriptive-correlational design, the research drew a purposive sample of students who were observed naturalistically within their regular classroom settings, ensuring that emotional and behavioral patterns emerged organically without experimental interference. Data on writing anxiety were collected using the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory, while academic writing performance was measured through standardized composition assessment. A Pearson product-moment correlation analysis was conducted to determine both the magnitude and direction of the relationship between the targeted variables. The results revealed that participants experienced moderate to high overall levels of writing anxiety, and a significant inverse relationship emerged between total anxiety scores and writing achievement, confirming that higher anxiety corresponds to lower academic writing performance. Dimensional analysis further indicated that cognitive apprehension carried the strongest predictive weight, reflecting students' intense dread of evaluation, while somatic anxiety and behavioral avoidance contributed additional yet secondary impacts. In alignment with diverging theoretical perspectives, mild baseline arousal occasionally functioned as a facilitating driver for a small subset of student profiles by motivating hurried or task-focused completion without any experimental manipulation. These findings demonstrate that affective distress functions as an active structural bottleneck rather than an incidental background condition, disrupting working memory and altering how secondary learners process target-language structures under timed academic constraints. The study recommends that future research adopt longitudinal, and to inform evidence-based pedagogical reforms in secondary EFL instruction.
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