The Correlations among Writing Motivation, Anxiety and Proficiency

Abstract

Writing cannot be separated from everyday life, both in education and other fields such as communication. Writing motivation and writing anxiety has always been a research topic because it was rare for researchers to combine three variables. The researcher is interested in examining these three variables. There were three purposes of this study. There were (1) to measure the correlation between the students' writing motivation and writing proficiency, (2) to measure the correlation between the students' writing anxiety and writing proficiency, (3) to measure the correlation between students' writing motivation, writing anxiety and writing proficiency. The design of the study was quantitative research with a correlation design. The research instruments were questionnaires and writing test. Two types of questionnaires were used. First, about students' writing motivation, the researcher used a questionnaire of the Self-Beliefs, Writing-Beliefs, and Attitude Survey (SWAS) developed by Wright et al. (2019). The second questionnaire to writing anxiety used a second language writing anxiety questionnaire (SLWAI) developed by Cheng (2004). The writing test was an argumentative text. The total sample of the research was 21 students fifth-semester students of the English Department at a state university in Palangka Raya Indonesia. The numerical data were analyzed by Kendall’s Correlation Coefficient that showed that: (1) the correlation between writing motivation and writing proficiency was the significant (2-tailed) 0.396 > 0.05, (2) the correlation between writing anxiety and writing proficiency was the significant (2-tailed) 0.024 < 0.05, the correlation writing motivation, writing anxiety and writing proficiency was the significant (2- tailed) .090 > 0.05. Thus, it sums that there was no correlation between writing motivation and writing proficiency. There was a correlation between writing anxiety and writing proficiency, and there was no correlation between writing motivation, writing anxiety, and writing proficiency.