The Effects of L2 Chinese Learners’ Perceived Writing Anxiety on Their L1 Use in Times of Major Exams Crisis

The purpose of this study was to explore the relations among English major learners’ perceived L2 writing anxiety and the use of L1 within their L2 -English writing performance. 226 Chinese sophomores of English major participated. A mixed methodology (qualitative+quantitative) was employed to collect data through SLWAI (Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory), think-aloud protocol and semi-structured interview for the sake of eliciting the dynamic thinking process of their perceived L2 writing anxiety of emotional crisis and L1 use within L2 writing performance on an English major argumentative writing task. The findings revealed that Chinese learners’ perceived L2 writing anxiety as an emotional crisis was positively correlated with their L1 use amount but negatively correlated with L2 writing performance. Nevertheless, in terms of a minor part of the participants in the study whose perceived L2 writing anxiety and L1 use amount were positively correlated with L2 writing performance. Implications are that the study not only investigated the relations but shed lights on the pedagogical field of L2 writing by proposing some effective measures to improve against their different anxiety sources of major exams crisis.