The Relationships Among Writing Skills, Writing Anxiety and Metacognitive Awareness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among students’ argumentative text writing skills, writing anxiety, and metacognitive awareness. The participants were composed of 375 8th graders in six middle schools in Sivas. Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (B Form) which was adapted in to Turkish by Karakelle & Saraç (2007) and Writing Anxiety Scale which was developed by Yaman (2010) were used to collect data. The argumentative texts that were gathered from the students were evaluated using the Argumentative Essay Rubric, which was developed within the scope of this study. Descriptive statistics were calculated, Spearman Correlation Analysis, and Kruskal-Wallis Test were applied for analyzing the data. The analyses revealed that the students’ argumentative text writing skills were inadequate. It was also determined that students with low writing anxiety were more successful in writing argumentative texts when compared with their counterparts with middle and high anxiety levels. Moreover, slight and positive relationship between argumentative text writing skills and metacognitive awareness, and a significant relationship between writing anxiety and metacognitive awareness were determined. As a result of the study, it can be stated that decreasing students’ writing anxiety and increasing their metacognitive awareness will have a positive effect on their argumentative text writing skills.