Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the writing anxiety that is one of the factors affecting the written expression skills of secondary school students according to several variables. Population of the study consisted of students studying in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade of secondary schools in Canakkale in the academic year of 2011 to 2012. Likert type “The Scale of Writing Anxiety” developed by Yaman (2010) was conducted to 1060 students selected randomly. Regarding the data analysis of total scores according to the variables of gender and the state of whether keeping a diary or not, statistics of t-test was accounted and significant level of 0.05 was taken as criterion. For the analysis of total scores of aspects related to grade level of students, their states of loving Turkish lesson, readability of handwriting and number of books read in a month, the statistics of one-way variance analysis - ANOVA F-test and Scheffe test to determine between which scores there is a significance were accounted. As a result of the research, it was found that anxiety levels of the students were low. Gender, grade level, keeping a diary or not, loving Turkish lesson or not, number of books read in a month and state of expression their handwriting as readable and nice are the important factors affecting anxiety levels of the students.

Key words: Anxiety, writing anxiety, anxiety level, writing education