An Exploration of Investigating the Writing Anxiety among ESL Learners in Pakistani ESL Pedagogy

Abstract

The individuals who are learning English as a second language commonly go through writing anxiety phenomenon that may hamper their capability to acquire a language and to make progress at an educational level. In the ESL education of Pakistan particularly it is a big hurdle especially felt at the intermediate levels. This research entails how the Pakistani ESL learners’ mother tongue or culture and their age-long fear of writing works hand in glove. The intermediate ESL students, who take their courses at colleges in the country, and it employs a mixed-methods approach. The study used a simplified version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) Likert scale as qualitative data. Pakistan finds English as a Second Language (ESL) education for its students an opportunity to venture into the multicultural network. The role of different cultural backgrounds, high schoolers’ ideas of English literature, and their study techniques on their attitudes towards English composition writing studied through the research. In addition, the research includes the learner's first language competencies and past experience in studying a second language as factors contributing to writing anxiety. The purpose of this study is to establish measures, which can make classrooms safer and more friendly to students and the viability of existing research in this subject. It may be the case that this involves exploring how productivity is assessed and coming up with a system that does not put so much emphasis on what the final outcome is and more on the progress. As another way of approaching this problem make researchers study the overall outcome from the group writing assignments and student-to-student feedback sessions. This study is aimed to give a weighty contribution to the existing research focusing on the influence of writing anxiety on cultural and linguistic contexts in Pakistan at a tertiary level. By putting into actions the results of this research report on instructional techniques appropriate and in line with the specific needs of ESL students in Pakistan can be implemented. The goal is finally a safe and supportive learning environment x where the students are motivated to do away with the fear of writing and then they get to develop their best in terms of writing English language.