9 minutes. This activity was done frequently before the class began. The students
used paper as the media to write their freewriting.
2. Writing Anxiety
Anxiety is a common experience to all of us on an almost daily basis. There are many definitions of anxiety, but the more appropriate one to be used in
this research is apprehension or excessive fear about real or imagined circumstances. According to Zanden, anxiety is defined as a diffuse, unfocused
emotional state, and fear as a response to tangible stimuli 1984. “Anxiety is a
state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object” Hilgard, Atkinson, Atkinson, 1971. Anxiety is a term which describes
a normal feeling people experience when faced with threat or danger, or when stressed. The central characteristic of anxiety is worry, which is excessive concern
about situations with uncertain outcomes Huberty, 2004. Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling or emotional state that has physiological
and behavioral concomitants Dusek, 1980, p. 88. Anxiety is said to be one of the factors that could affect the process of learning, and researchers such as MacIntyre
1995, Horwitz et al. 1986 and MacIntyre and Gardner 1989 and 1991 claim that language courses are very anxiety-provoking Daud, 2005. In this study,
writing anxiety is anxious or unpleasant feelings, fear, unfocused emotional state which are felt by Paragraph writing students at the beginning of the semester due
to limited competence. The feelings were experienced before the lecturer used five-minute freewriting.
10
3. Paragraph Writing Class
Paragraph Writing class is one of the compulsory subjects offered in second semester in English Language Education Study Program of Sanata
Dharma University. The preresquite subject which is needed to be eligible is Basic Writing. Basic writing is designed to introduce students to minimum
requirements needed by the students in writing PBI Academic Guideline, 2011, p.33. The minimum requirements include subject verb agreement, grammar,
tenses, spelling, and diction. Paragraph Writing is to give students to practice in writing a good paragraph PBI Academic Guideline, 2011, p.33. In this course,
the students are introduced to the concept of topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence to make a well unified and coherent paragraph. On
completing the course, students are able to: compose a good paragraph, write well using different types of writing genre, deconstruct the generic and schematic
structure of each genre, and find the social purposes and linguistic features of the txt with the learned genres PBI Academic Guideline, 2011, p.33.
11
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This following chapter presents the review of related literature which is used to answer the research questions. This chapter consists of two sections; the
theoretical description and the theoretical framework. In theoretical description, the researcher provides some theories about writing, anxiety, writing anxiety, the
students in Paragraph Writing class which are considered as EFL English as Foreign Language students, and freewriting. While the second section is
theoretical framework which consists of the summary of the major relevant theories to help the researcher conducts the study to solve the research problems.
A. Theoretical Description
This study discusses the use of five-minute freewriting to reduce EFL students
’ writing anxiety in Paragraph Writing class. This chapter provides the theories which are related to the study matter. This section describes the theories
of writing which includes the nature of writing, types, benefits and some important information of writing. Then, since the first research problem deals with
the factors which influence EFL students’ writing anxiety, the researcher provides some theories related to anxiety and writing anxiety. While the second research
question was about to what extent five-minute freewriting reduce EFL stu dents’
writing anxiety, the researcher provides some theories related to freewriting, and the EFL students in Paragraph Writing class.
