23 she found three factors which influenced
students’ writing anxiety. According to Iswandari 2013, the three major factors were: 1 Making grammatical mistakes,
2 Having difficulty in finding ideas, and 3 Making minimum requirement mistakes. There are some similarities between Hyland’s and Iswandari’s. The
similar factors which influence students’ writing anxiety are making grammatical mistakes and making minimum requirements.
d. Writing Anxiety and EFL Students in Paragraph Writing
The researcher identifies the students in Paragraph Writing Class as the subject of this study. The researcher found that the EFL students have anxious
before they start to write. They are afraid to make mistake in their writing. Both Cheshire 1982, 1991 and Hyland 1998, for example, found that their “students
who worried about grammatical errors had writing anxiety or less confidence in writing” Both Cheshire 1982, 1991 and Hyland 1998 as cited in Hwang,
2010. MacIntyre et al. 1997, found that anxious students underestimated their competence relative to less anxious ones who on the other hand, overestimated
their competence as cited in Daud, 2005, p.5. Horwitz 1986 comments that self-consciousness and anxiety of the language learner are caused by the mismatch
between mature thought, immature foreign and second language proficiency as cited in Daud, 2005, p.5.
4. Freewriting
There are many ways to overcome students writing anxiety. One of the ways is freewriting. Since the researcher pursues the use of five-minute
freewriting to reduce EFL students’ writing anxiety, the theories of freewriting are
24 essentially considered to be mentioned. The theories are on the nature, types, and
benefit of freewriting.
a. The Nature of Freewriting
Accordin g to Elbow, “Freewriting is defined as writing any ideas or
thoughts that come to mind in a given time period without stopping” Elbow. P, 1973. However, freewriting is broadly defined as writing without stopping and
editing, has been viewed and used as a powerful technique for developing student’s writing since it was initially advocated by writing theorist Peter Elbow
1973, 1998. “Freewriting was one of the popular methods used during the late 1960 and early 1970 Fox Suhor, 1986 to improve writing fluency” Fox
Suhor, 1986 as cited in Hwang, 2010. The general characteristic of freewriting can vary depending on context such as changing the amount of time allowed or
giving a specific topic Fontaine, 1991 as cited in Hwang, 2010. MacArthur, C. A, Graham, S, Fitzg
erald 2006 also stated that “It is an exercise in bringing together the process of producing words and putting them dow
n on the page”. In addition, freewriting leads the writer to write any words produced which come
ups to the mind and deliver it into the page. Elbow 1998 who is proponent of freewriting argues that students should not stop writing while doing freewriting
because “the main thing about freewriting is that it is nonediting” as cited in Hwang, 2010. Thus, the EFL students may write everything freely in freewriting.
Meanwhile , Langan stated that “freewriting means jotting down in rough
sentences or phrases everything that comes to mind about a possible topic”
Langan, 2005. Therefore, write everything that comes up to the mind can avoid
