Effects of integrated feedback on academic writing achievement and writing anxiety

This study examines the effects of integrated feedback on students’ writing achievement and their level of writing anxiety. It also explores the relationship between the students’ writing achievement and their writing anxiety. Then, it further investigates the attitude of the students towards the implementation of integrated feedback in writing. Twenty students from one class were used as the sample group (intact group) to participate in this study. Convenience sampling was used to select the participants. The research instruments consisted of an integrated feedback model, a pretest and posttest, a writing anxiety questionnaire, and semi-structured interview questions. The participants did the pretest and writing anxiety questionnaire during the first week of the study. Later on, they were required to write four-paragraph writing tasks and all of them were assessed and given feedback. Then they were required to do the posttest and writing anxiety questionnaire during week 14. The following week was reserved for an in-depth interview. The writing achievement of the students was analyzed by using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, mean and standard deviation. Writing anxiety was analyzed quantitatively using mean and standard deviation. The correlation between writing achievement and writing anxiety was analyzed twice (before and after treatment) by using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Week 15 was reserved for interviewing and the results were analyzed by content analysis. The results demonstrated that the students improved their writing significantly after they cooperated with the integrated feedback. Their writing anxiety levels were found to be moderate at two stages, and there was a negative correlation with no statistical significance between writing achievement and writing anxiety during both phases (before and after treatment). The interview results revealed that they had positive attitudes toward implementing integrated feedback in improving their writing skill.