STUDY ON GENDER ANXIETY IN WRITING

Abstract

This research reported the difference of writing anxiety suffered by male and female students and the factors behind their writing anxiety. This quantitative research applied two type of questionnaires to compile necessary data which adapted from SLWAI (Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory) by Cheng (2004) and CSLWAI (Cause of Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory) by Rezaei and Jafari (2014). The research had 30 male students and 33 female students in their second grade of senior high school as research subject. The finding showed that male students suffered cognitive anxiety, avoidance behavior anxiety and somatic anxiety. Meanwhile, female students suffered somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety. The different between male and female students’ writing anxiety factors laid in male students had linguistic difficulties followed with writing techniques while female students only had writing techniques ad factors affecting their writing anxiety. Therefore, male students had worse writing anxiety than female students. So, building awareness about students’ writing anxiety would help students, teacher and future researcher to find various solution to decrease and solve the problem such as building suitable teaching and learning environment based on this research finding and future related researches.