The Impact of Academic Procrastination on Second Language Writing: The Mediating Role of L2 Writing Anxiety

Abstract

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the exploration of psychological properties in a second language context. Considerable literature has grown up around the influence of these psychological properties on L2 writing specifically. However, the impact of academic procrastination, which is an important psychological property, has been understudied and it remains unclear how affective factors in L2 might play a role in the above potential influence on L2 writing. Therefore, the current study explored the impact of academic procrastination on L2 writing and examined the mediating role of L2 writing anxiety, by adopting text readability as an innovative approach to assessing L2 writing performance. Participants were 55 Chinese speakers of L2 English. By utilizing the collected questionnaire data and the readability indicators of the L2 writing task, the current research conducted correlation analysis, regression analysis, and structural equation modeling analysis. The results revealed that academic procrastination had a significant negative impact on the readability indicator of Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level in L2 writing. L2 writing anxiety played a complete mediating role in the impact. Academic procrastination can significantly affect Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of L2 writing indirectly through L2 writing anxiety. Pedagogical implications and future studies were discussed.

Understanding Chinese EFL learners’ anxiety in second language writing for the sustainable development of writing skills

“…The findings regarding Chinese EFL learners' experience of Cognitive Anxiety in the present study are also in line with those of previous research in some aspects. As has been mentioned, according to some of the previous studies, EFL learners in China usually experienced Cognitive Anxiety the most (Chiang, 2012;Sun and Fan, 2022;Zhang and Zhang, 2022), while those outside China did not.…”

“…All in all, these studies of SLWA indicated that EFL learners in China usually experienced Cognitive Anxiety the most (Chiang, 2012;Sun and Fan, 2022;Zhang and Zhang, 2022), while EFL learners outside China usually experienced Avoidance Behavior the most (Xiao and Wong, 2014;Salem, 2022). No research on SLWA has attended to these differences, as their research focus was usually on the multi-dimensional nature of anxiety, or other variables related to anxiety.…”

“…Accordingly, Cheng's (2004) model comprises Somatic Anxiety, Avoidance Behavior, and Cognitive Anxiety. Some studies explored these three dimension of SLWA, and these studies indicated that EFL learners in China usually experienced Cognitive Anxiety the most (Chiang, 2012;Sun and Fan, 2022;Zhang and Zhang, 2022), while EFL learners outside China usually experienced Avoidance Behavior the most (Xiao and Wong, 2014;Salem, 2022). Although these studies have provided more information than research using unidimensional measurement (Cheng, 2017), they generally possessed a quantitative nature, lacking qualitative and in-depth investigation.…”

“Time is My Own Treasure”: Parental Autonomy Support and Academic Procrastination Among Chinese Adolescents

“…3 Studies have shown that academic procrastination not only affects students' academic performance [4][5][6] but also may cause them negative emotions, 7 such as anxiety about exams and academic tasks. 8,9 In addition, some researchers have found that there is also a significant relationship between academic procrastination and externalizing problems in forms such as problematic internet usage. 10 Previous studies on academic procrastination have mostly focused on college students, and few studies have researched middle school students, specifically.…”

The impact of social phobia on willingness to communicate in a second language: The mediation effect of ideal L2 self

“…Scholarly attention has thus been steered to a much broader exploration of domain-general psychological properties in the L2 context more recently. Grit ( Liu and Wang, 2021 ), resilience ( Li, 2022 ), academic procrastination ( Zhang and Zhang, 2022 ) and enjoyment ( Dewaele and Alfawzan, 2018 ) etc. were at the centre of the discussion.…”