Language Learning Styles and Writing Strategies as Predictors of Writing Anxiety among Iranian EFL Learners

The main aim of this study was to see if a significant relationship existed among Iranian EFL learners’ LearningStyles, Writing Strategies and Writing Anxiety. To this effect, 183 EFL learners studying English in three languageinstitutes from the upper intermediate and advanced proficiency levels were selected based on convenient nonrandomsampling procedure. They completed the Kolb Learning Style (KLS), the Inventory of Learning Strategies for writing(ILS) and the Foreign Language Writing Anxiety Scale (FLWAS) self-report questionnaires. However, after the initialscreening, 21 cases were discarded as their answers were incomplete, leaving 162 participants in the final sample. Therelationship among EFL learners learning styles, writing strategies and writing anxiety were analyzed using theSpearman rank order coefficient of correlation. Since, the results indicated statistically significant relationships amongthem, multiple regression analyses were run to see if significant predictors of EFL learners’ writing anxiety could beidentified. Interestingly, the analyses showed that pragmatist learning style made the strongest statistically significantunique contribution to predict writing anxiety while activist learning style failed to make such a significantcontribution. To clarify, the negative relationship suggests that the more pragmatic the preferred learning style is, thelower the writing anxiety. Furthermore, only memory writing strategy made a statistically significant uniquecontribution to predicting writing anxiety while the other five writing strategies did not. To explain further, theirpositive relationship implies that learners who apply memory strategies more, face higher levels of writing anxiety.Thus, this study identified learners’ pragmatist learning style and memory writing strategy as significant predictors ofwriting anxiety in the EFL context. As a result, not only does this study provide statistical evidence of the relationshipamong these variables but it also stresses the importance of EFL learners’ language learning styles and writingstrategies to their writing anxiety.