Writing skills are imperative for students in any career; however, many students have acknowledged avoiding courses that emphasize writing. These same students fail to learn proper mechanics during their post-secondary education. Writing intensive courses have served as a place where students have the opportunity to improve confidence, minimize…

There is growing interest in promoting metacognition among college and university students, as this has been linked with positive student learning outcomes. This study explores the relationship between student writing anxiety and self-efficacy on undergraduate students' self-reported use of metacognitive writing strategies. Using undergraduate…

Employers have identified oral and written communications skills to be the most important skills graduates should possess when entering the workforce. In order for faculty to better understand their students' oral and written communications skills, they should understand what apprehension the students have toward oral and written communications.…

The present study aimed at investigating higher education L2 learners in a Turkish context in terms of writing self-efficacy, writing anxiety, and the causes of writing anxiety. The data have been collected through the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI), developed by Cheng, (2004), and Causes of Writing Anxiety Inventory (CWAI), and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of writing apprehension and how writing apprehension level and writing self-efficacy beliefs influences writing proficiency level among pre-university students. Participants were 320 pre-university students from a northern region college offering this programme. All the respondents were…

Since the inception of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement more than 30 years ago, scholars have explored ways of enhancing students' writing performance. Faculty members across disciplines are often challenged by students' resistance to writing; resistance that may stem from anxiety, poor academic performance, and lack of recognition that…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of Albert Bandura's four hypothesized sources of self-efficacy on students' writing self-efficacy beliefs (N = 1256) and to explore how these sources differ as a function of gender and academic level (elementary, middle, high). Consistent with the tenets of self-efficacy theory, each of the…

The authors investigated changes in self-efficacy in writing and writing apprehension in a sample of first-year college students in an interdisciplinary writing-intensive course taught by faculty from varied disciplines at a liberal arts college. Results showed that self-efficacy in writing significantly increased while writing apprehension…

This study tested the influence of writing self-efficacy, writing apprehension, perceived usefulness of writing, and writing aptitude on 218 fifth graders' essay-writing performance. Students' beliefs about their abilities directly influenced apprehension, perceived usefulness, and performance, and partially mediated the effects of gender and…

A study investigated the writing self-efficacy, writing outcome expectations, writing apprehension, personal self-efficacy, and writing performance of 30 undergraduate students throughout one semester. Results indicated support for social cognitive theory and prior findings that report a relationship between self-efficacy and performance. A…

A study explored how students' writing apprehension and self-efficacy beliefs affect their use of teacher comments on first drafts of stories. The driving force behind the study stemmed from an interest in how to provide more effective, relevant feedback to students. The study examined student use of global and local feedback--global feedback is…

Study tested influence of writing self-efficacy, writing apprehension, and writing aptitude on 181 ninth-grade students. Aptitude and self-efficacy had direct effects on performance. Girls and boys did not differ in aptitude or performance, but girls reported lower writing self-efficacy. Native English-speaking Hispanic students had lower aptitude…

Path analysis was used to test the influence of writing self-efficacy, self-concept, apprehension, and aptitude on the essay-writing performance of 181 ninth-grade students in a public high school in the southwestern United States. A model that also included gender accounted for 53% of the variance in performance. As hypothesized, both aptitude…

A study examined differences in writing self-efficacy beliefs among high- and low-apprehensive writers. The Daly-Miller (1975a) Writing Apprehension Test was administered to 43 developmental writers in 3 freshman composition classes. Students scoring plus or minus one standard deviation from the mean for that population were selected for further…

According to self-efficacy theorists, people's judgments of what they can accomplish are influential arbiters in human agency and, as such, powerful determinants of their behavior. In large part, this is because these self-efficacy beliefs are said to act as mediators between other acknowledged influences on behavior, such as skill, ability,…