Technology-Assisted EFL Academic Writing and Its Relation to Academic Writing Anxiety

Abstract

Research practice is given top priority in universities worldwide. Scholars are pushed to write and publish articles in high-ranking journals with high citation indexes, mostly English-medium journals. English as a foreign language (EFL) scholars are anxious to publish articles in Anglophone journals and one of these obstacles is academic writing skills. Studies on academic writing paid more attention to the process and obstacles of EFL students of different ages. A few studies focus on strategies EFL scholars adopt, especially those related to technology. Hence, this paper bridged the gap by investigating the relationship between EFL scholars’ academic writing strategies with the assistance of technology and their second language academic writing anxiety (SLAWA) in China. This study is a quantitative study with 140 Chinese scholars participating. Participants used technology to gain online databases most frequently. It also showed that technological strategies in the planning stage positively relate to SLAWA. In contrast, technological strategies in the problem-solving stage have no relation with SLAWA. In addition, participants' characteristics such as age and gender have no significance with SLAWA. The findings of this study suggest that more academic writing training related to technology is needed especially in the before-writing stage where scholars complain about SLAWA mostly.