19 to Huberty 2004 are concentration difficulties, memory problem, worry,
irritability, fear of losing control, fear of failure, and difficulties in problem solving.
Behavioral anxiety related to social anxious feeling. Behavior anxiety exists from the behavior to interact with others. Behavioral anxiety can be seen by
shyness, withdrawal, frequently asking question, rapid speech, excessive talking, habit behaviors such as hair pulling or twirling, and impulsiveness
Huberty,2004. While the anxious feeling related to substantial factors called physical anxiety. Physical anxiety can be seen by eyes because it is relevant to
physical activity. The examples of physical anxiety are trembling or shaking, increased heart rate, excessive perspiration, shortness of breath, dizziness, chest
pain or discomfort, flushing of the skin, nausea and muscle tension. The type of anxiety which is related to this study is cognitive type. It is because writing is
considered as thinking and intellectual activity.
3. Writing Anxiety
The following parts provide the theories of writing anxiety which covers the nature of writing anxiety, the symptoms of writing anxiety, the cause of
writing anxiety and the relation between writing anxiety and EFL Students. a.
The Nature of Writing anxiety
A small level of anxiety is normal, but severe anxiety can be a serious problem Dubson, 2012. It clearly means that having too much anxious feeling is
not good especially for EFL students in learning activity. However, anxious
20 people are better at learning easy material and poorer at learning more difficult
material Weitzner, 1965 in McClelland, 1985. EFL students tend to learn more difficult material since they learn English as their foreign language and they
absolutely experienced anxiety. In this research, the anxious feeling which will be discussed is writing anxiety.
Writing anxiety is defined as “a general avoidance of writing behaviour and of situations thought to potentially require some amount of writing
accompanied by the potential for evaluation of that writing Hasan, 2001, p.4. as cited in Iswandari, 2013.
The students who experienced writing anxiety tend to try avoid to write because some certain situations. Psychologically, learners who are oriented to
avoiding negative judgements of their competence are more anxious about test and their performance Linnenbrink, 2005. Negative judgements can be one of
the factors which caused writing anxiety. The students become insecure in writing. As McClelland stated that there is some evidence of what more anxious
people seek is some kind of security 1985, p. 376. Besides, “writing anxiety can
be detrimental to your writing abilities. It can make you put off completing your work, which can lead to you not writing as well as you could
” Missisipi University,2010.
In addition, writing anxiety could affect students’ writing product. Further, they need to be guided and trained to write to get the evaluation
of their writing “Therefore, the notion of success in writing is associated with self-
expression, flow of ideas, outsider expectations, growing confidence and enjoyment of L2 academic writing, and L2 students are known to have
problems coping with this ” Basturkmen and Lewis, 2002 as cited in
Daud, 2005.
