Can TBLT Be a Remedy for EFL Writing Anxiety? Towards Better-Quality Writing Output

This exploratory practice study addresses the puzzle of EFL writing anxiety experienced by pre-service teachers. To decipher the puzzle, probe its likely causes, and propose solutions, we conducted an exploratory study with a group of 37 first-year, preservice teachers at the Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Medenine (HIHSM), Tunisia, using a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach as a potential remedy for the puzzle. Data were gathered via (a) a student needs analysis on the challenges encountered while doing writing assignments, (b) our reflections on the design and implementation of a TBLT lesson plan, (c) a student satisfaction survey on the TBLT experiment, and (d) students’ writing assignments. Our findings show that a TBLT-inspired writing sequence boosted students’ enthusiasm, motivation and self-confidence, lessened their anxiety, and improved their writing quality. The implementation of TBLT was, however, not without challenges.


INTRODUCTION
Productive language skills (i.e., speaking and writing) are generally perceived as the most challenging skills for EFL students, many of whom usually show anxiety whenever they are asked to produce language either orally or in writing, particularly in formal contexts.Horwitz et al. (2010) found that "approximately one-third of students studying a foreign language experience at least a moderate level of foreign language anxiety" (p.99).The current exploratory study, however, focuses specifically on writing anxiety.Being a productive skill that requires the learners' individual efforts to showcase their linguistic, topical, socio-cognitive, contextual, and language-mechanics resources, writing has often been regarded as one of the most demanding and difficult skills to be acquired by EFL students.Pre-service teachers (PSTs), in particular, should master this skill before teaching it to their future basic education students: One cannot give what s/he does not have (" ‫ال‬ ‫الشيء‬ ‫فاقد‬ ‫,)"يعطيه‬ as the Arabic proverb says.
It is within this perspective that we decided to explore the puzzle of our own studentteachers' writing anxiety, with two goals: 1) understanding the main causes of this problem and 2) changing the course of our pedagogy in order to improve our own teaching.

THE PUZZLE
The writing anxiety puzzle addressed in our study refers to the tension, nervousness, and the writing block PSTs experience when asked to do a writing assignment, mainly when it is part of a summative assessment.As teachers, we have endeavored to explore whether this psychological phenomenon has exerted a negative impact on the quality of our students' writing and what might have been some of the underlying causes.We have also wanted to see if the adoption of the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach in the design and implementation of writing task sequencing would improve students' writing anxiety and, thus, ultimately improve their writing quality given that the TBLT is widely recognized as a psycholinguistically valid approach (Willis & Willis, 2007;Feryok, 2017;Han, 2018;Beccia, 2021).
Our study was guided by three research questions (RQs): 1.Why do many students feel anxious whenever asked to do writing assignments?(RQ1) 2. To what extent can the implementation of TBLT help mitigate student' writing anxiety?(RQ2) 3. To what extent can TBLT contribute to improving students' writing quality?(RQ3)

Participants
The participants in this study were 37 PSTs in their first year at the Education Department in the Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Medenine (HIHSM), Tunisia.For practicality and convenience, only one group (SE 13; n=37) out of the Department's five firstyear groups (N=184) was randomly selected as our sample to experience a TBLT writing lesson on strategies of reading for writing.The participants were almost of the same age (i.e., 18-20) and cultural background, most of them coming from the conservative southern Tunisian governorates (Medenine, Tataouine, Gabes, Kbeli, Gafsa, Sfax, etc.).However, they had different proficiency levels in English, and came from different baccalaureate sections (e.g., arts, experimental sciences, math, information technology).Generally, students of the arts have had more advanced and intensive exposure to English (5 hours vs. 3 hours per week for the other sections).

Data Collection
To collect data, we adopted both downward and upward routes of exploratory research, consulting the research literature for insights and conducting bottom-up in-situ exploration.We hoped to not only solve the learning puzzle, but to also contribute to a better understanding of classroom-based second language learning (Beccia, 2021).
Exploratory research does not only facilitate better classroom practice, but also supports the emergence of "personal living theories of practice" (Whitehead, 1989), or what McNiff (1993) called the I-theory of knowledge, as opposed to E-theory, which is generated outside the classroom by outsiders who are not in and of the classroom (Bryant, 1996) without the situated knowledge of the classroom.Teacher research, as Mortimore (1999) conceived, is "real world research," where the teacher researcher is a "real-life flesh and blood person" (McNiff, 2001) researching their own practice to gain knowledge on how effective they teach and on how their students learn better.
The focus of the present exploratory practice study is on finding a solution for the EFL writing anxiety problem for Tunisian PSTs; any other gains could come later as a result of the success of this study in its endeavor.

Procedure
From a bottom-up perspective, this exploratory practice study began with a needs analysis to glean information from the PSTs' viewpoints regarding their own writing challenges and to tap into their areas of anxiety and the factors behind it.Doing so, we ensured a well-informed and collaborative approach where their students were co-researchers contributing to solving the puzzle.
Two forms of data were collected at the needs analysis stage: an informal classroom conversation and a Facebook poll.Although both activities are informal in nature, they can be used as reliable qualitative instruments of data collection, for, as Swain and King (2022) justified, "these conversations create a greater ease of communication and often produce more naturalistic data" (Abstract).The main aim of the classroom informal conversation was to identify whether PSTs' anxiety was related to written or oral English language production.The Facebook poll was created later to gain further insights into the main challenges that PSTs would generally encounter when writing formal assignments and exams, and that very likely would lead to their writing anxiety (see Figure 1 for a snapshot of the Facebook poll).
As Figure 1 shows, the participants were required to select the most challenging writing aspect among five suggested options: grammar; vocabulary; language mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization); organization and layout; and finally, appropriacy and register.

FIGURE 1 Facebook Poll
Note.The poll was shared on the SE13 Facebook group at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/se13group The needs analysis, in its two steps (the informal conversation and the Facebook Poll), was designed to allow more acute decisions to inform the subsequent research steps: the design of the TBLT writing sequence, its implementation and, ultimately, the evaluation of the PSTs' writing outcomes.TBLT should be "built upon the explicit connections between learners' needs and the identification of valuable target language tasks, and the assessment of learners' outcomes in terms of language performance," as Norris (2016) recommended (p.178).
The design of a TBLT writing task sequence, which followed Willis and Willis' (2007) TBLT framework, consisted of a series of pedagogical tasks to facilitate a writing target task about the secrets of a successful marriage (see Appendix A for the detailed TBLT lesson plan).
The final steps of the exploratory practice study involved an error analysis of the PSTs' final writing output and a post-practice satisfaction survey.During the post-task stage, the teacher evaluated the PST's final writing productions and provided detailed feedback on their writing assignments' quality and on their abilities to restructure their understanding of the topic of successful marriage following an evaluation grid we designed (Appendix B).The evaluation grid has six dimensions: morpho-syntactic resources; Lexical Resources; topical resources; mechanics of writing; organization coherence and cohesion; socio-cognitive, contextual, and rhetorical resources.
Finally, the satisfaction survey gathered the students' feedback regarding their in-class practice, specifically focusing on the TBLT implementation and its impact on reducing writing anxiety and promoting stress-free writing practices.
In sum, in this exploratory practice study, a student needs analysis was carried out through classroom informal conversations and a Facebook poll on the sorts of challenges students encounter when doing writing assignments.We then designed and observed the implementation of a writing task sequence in our classroom.Finally, we evaluated the students' writing quality by means of an error analysis and administered a student satisfaction survey after the TBLT lesson to determine the extent to which the task-based teaching reduced the students' writing anxiety and enhanced their writing skills.

Needs Analysis
The data showed that the most difficult skills for them to acquire as EFL students were productive skills.They found writing, in particular, the most challenging of all, and many of them expressed anxiety while doing writing assignments in a summative assessment context.Next, the Facebook poll further unveiled the common writing challenges that could cause students' writing anxiety.See Figure 2 for the statistical results of the Facebook Poll.

FIGURE 2 Common Writing Challenges According to the Facebook Poll
As shown in Figure 2, the majority of PSTs (74%) reported that they had challenges at the level of grammar and vocabulary, whereas only a small number of students had issues with organization, register and writing mechanics.Thus, the most commonly reported writing challenges among PSTs included struggles with grammar and sentence structure (39%), issues with generating vocabulary items (35%), and troubles with spelling (18%).These writingrelated difficulties would lead to feelings of frustration, self-doubt, and anxiety among students.
Although the poll responding rate was not very high (23 out of 37 PSTs), the needs analysis, all in all, yielded interesting findings.It was clear that the productive skills constituted a real challenge for PSTs especially in formal contexts such as exams or graded assignments.Understanding the anxiety puzzle is the preliminary step towards addressing the real areas of difficulty and improving the performance of the PSTs and the teaching practice of their teachers.

Task-Based Teaching
In this section we offer our own observations and reflections on the design and implementation of their TBLT lesson, which revolved around a real-life topic, appealing to their students: the secrets of successful marriage.Such a topic is at the heart of the interests of many young-adult learners.Incorporating authentic and meaningful content in language instruction could promote engagement and enhance the learning experience.As Willis and Willis (2007) noted, designing tasks that encourage learners to engage in discussions on topics of personal interest can foster greater opportunities for language use (p.70).
The goal of the TBLT writing sequence design was to help the students write a coherent paragraph about keys to a successful marriage.The sequence included three main stages: the pre-task stage, the target task stage, and the post-task stage (See Appendix A for the detailed lesson plan and Appendix C for samples of students' output at each stage).
The pre-task stage had two priming tasks that would facilitate the target task: a listening task centering around a video of a native speaker talking about her family and providing insights into what makes a successful marriage (see Appendix D); and a reading task based on a newspaper article entitled "The longest married couple celebrates 70 th year of marriage" (Driscoll, 2004).Both tasks served to activate the PSTs' prior knowledge about the topic, their lexical and linguistic schema, and introduce key vocabulary associated with the topic that would likely be used later in the target task.
The listening comprehension task was followed by an information-gap activity based on the native speaker's video to help students work collaboratively to identify and discuss the missing items while reaching a consensus on the correct version of the video script.Listening to authentic input and writing in the missing words, students reproduced the language as a first writing step that contained a lower cognitive load.By focusing on language reproduction and creating a supportive environment, this task contributed to message comprehension, and guided learners towards a less challenging English output.Information-gap tasks, done in groups, are effective not only in helping students learn form, meaning, and function, but also in managing conversational interactions, as Pica (1994) explained.
In the second priming task, PSTs were presented with real-world written English input (an authentic newspaper article on the topic of "successful marriage") to develop their reading skills.They were asked to skim for the gist and to scan for specific details from the text while focusing on meaning.After that, students were asked to read intensively a short extract from the article and to work in groups to identify main ideas, recognize text signals, construct detailed meaning from the text and guess the meaning of new lexical items in context.Unlike the conventional reading practice, students were not given the text on separate sheets of paper to read individually, but the extract was rather displayed on the data show to encourage students to work in groups to answer comprehension questions and collaboratively negotiate the meaning of the text using English.This facilitated students' comprehension and their use of English.
After having a good grasp of the text meaning, students were given an opportunity to focus on form as well.They were asked to combine choppy simple sentences extracted from the text to form compound, complex or compound-complex sentences minding the appropriate use of punctuation marks and conjunctions.The task was done individually, with answers compared in groups.This form-focused task, which consolidated PSTs' previous knowledge on sentence structure, created opportunities to teach/learn grammar (sentence structure, subordination and coordination) and punctuation in a meaningful context.As Williams (2012) elaborated, the goal of the written input is "to prompt learners to pay attention to form-meaning relations that may prompt them to revise their linguistic expression, demonstrating control over their linguistic knowledge" (p.44).
The listening and reading tasks paved the way for students to achieve the writing target task with minimum writing anxiety and with maximum language support.The target task cycle was built on three phases: doing a task, planning, and reporting.The cycle started with having the students do a creative writing task, a project-based writing activity done in groups (in the same groups created since the beginning of the lesson).The students in each group were required to brainstorm ideas about the topic of successful marriage before writing down tips for newly-married couples in coherent sentences on an A3 sheet to be posted later on the wall.During the planning phase, students collaboratively prepared an oral report to the whole class on how they did the task, what was special about their work and what challenges they had encountered.In the reporting phase, a representative of each group stood in front of their group poster to present their ideas to the whole class.This task further increased the PSTs' engagement in the writing task.Subsequently, the teacher fostered peer correction among the students instead of directly pointing out errors, and incentivized the class by drawing a trophy for the winning group whose project would be shared on social media.
We observed that the collaborative nature of the project-based writing activity, coupled with the teacher's support, had enormously alleviated PSTs' writing anxiety.They were motivated and excited to openly share their thoughts with their peers and apply the language they had pooled in the priming tasks during the pre-task stage.Despite their divergent characteristics, all students took part in the production task (see the photos of students' group dynamics in Appendix C).
At this level, the PSTs were linguistically and psychologically prepared to do a more cognitively-demanding writing task, i.e., individually writing a coherent paragraph on the keys to a successful marriage.Given the shortage of class time and to provide ample time for students to think about their language and consult extra sources to refine their lexical and syntactic choices, the writing task assignment was given as a homework activity.Moreover, doing the assignment at home and turning it in via email would not only save precious class time, but also allow teachers to adequately evaluate the students' work and analyze their errors before the beginning of the next session.Students were to be assessed on their writing skills and on their ability to pool ideas, new lexical items, and sentence structures from the previous tasks.

Error Analysis
The final outputs of the student participants (n=37) were assessed according to the scoring rubric designed by the teacher-researchers (Appendix B).Five samples were selected for error analysis.Three of the five samples achieved good to excellent marks in the morphosyntactic dimension, while four samples obtained average or poor results in the mechanics of writing.All five samples showed interference from French, the participants' second language (L2), mirroring a phenomenon pervasive in the larger population of Tunisian EFL learners who have had an early exposure to their L2.In Tunisia, French is taught since the third grade and the amount of instructional time is akin to that for teaching and learning the native language Arabic.In contrast, the instructional time for English is far less--two hours per week in fifth and sixth grades.

FIGURE 4 Rating Results for Five Writing Samples
As is highlighted in Figure 4, students appeared to find it difficult to stick to the rules of academic English mechanics.The frequency of errors at the level of spelling, word choice and sentence structure reveals the puzzle at the levels of practice and language acquisition.The classification of errors suggests a link between writing quality and anxiety as students tried to produce error-free writing.Unlike the expectations students expressed through the Facebook poll, the results of the error analysis revealed that PSTs were having more issues related to mechanics (Appendix E).Based on this finding, it appears that we as teachers could focus on one particular issue at a time and plan remedial task-based instruction.
Compared to the accuracy results, the five samples achieved much better results in the socio-cognitive and contextual dimensions.This may suggest that the students identified with the selected topic that aligns with their social context and satisfies their communicative and interpersonal goals.

Students' Satisfaction Survey
The satisfaction survey aimed to determine if TBLT reduces student anxiety in writing classes by posing closed as well as open-ended questions.Thirty PSTs answered the survey questions anonymously.A key finding was that students felt free to express their viewpoints without fear of judgment from their teacher and peers.Open-ended questions allowed for creative expression in English.Table 1 shows that students had significant interest in the linguistic input obtained during the priming and planning phases.The respondents valued both oral (37%) and written (30%) input.More students were satisfied with the listening and reading materials than students appreciating the form-focused activity (combining sentences + grammaticalization).Overall, TBLT created a supportive environment, reducing anxiety and enabling students to express their viewpoints openly.Guided writing (combining sentences + grammaticalization) 3 10% Creative writing (sentences on the wall) 7 23% As Willis and Willis (2007) conceived, learning is a dynamic process that prepares learners for real-world use of language.What PSTs expressed in the survey proves that TBLT creates spontaneous interaction in class.It helped students grasp the linguistic items and generate refined versions of their own.Most importantly, the high level of satisfaction reflects the cognitive and linguistic gains that learners had incidentally acquired throughout the task sequence.
PSTs were asked via a five-point Likert scale survey (Appendix F) to express their degree of satisfaction with the TBLT experience in terms of the session topic, the learning atmosphere and the relevance to their needs.Figure 3 displays respondents' levels of satisfaction.

FIGURE 3 Survey Questions 2, 3, &4: Student Perceptions of TBLT Experience
The bar graph in Figure 3 displays the PSTs' high satisfaction levels, especially in terms of content and learning atmosphere.The participants' responses were rewarding for us because they revealed a sense of fulfillment, even though the students might not be aware of their learning needs, as the results show on Question 4, where about a third of the respondents opted for neutral responses.
In their reply to the survey's open-ended question "Do you plan to apply TBLT with young learners in the future?" the majority of the respondents (90%) were enthusiastic about replicating the experience with their future young learners (see Appendix G for samples of both positive and negative feedback).As a reflection on the TBLT lesson, the survey integrated learners and promoted their engagement in class.The anonymity of responses to the survey enabled students to express their thoughts without fear of judgment from the teacher or peers.One participant reflected on the TBLT lesson and stated that it "is beneficial because it is motivating for the different levels of students.They become very active and excited to work in groups and participate better in class.It adds enthusiasm to the session."The engagement of learners from different proficiency levels provided evidence that the TBLT lesson helped lower anxiety.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
This exploratory practice study shows that the TBLT writing sequence promoted the enthusiasm, motivation and self-confidence while lessening the anxiety of PSTs at the HIHSM.These outcomes were due to many factors.First, centering the target task around an important topic that is at the heart of their everyday life-for example, the secrets of a successful marriage-has engaged their interest and helped them understand and produce the target language while focusing on conveying the meaning and not being too much concerned with the accuracy of forms, which used to be their major source of anxiety.Second, giving enough time for the priming and preparation stages helped the students mine useful morphosyntactic items and expressions, pool ideas, think about the language to be employed, and polish all that into a coherent communicative piece of writing.Moreover, sequencing tasks incrementally from the least cognitively demanding (e.g., brainstorming) to the more complex ones (e.g., creative writing) facilitated learning and alleviated writer's block.Additionally, implementing collaborative pedagogic tasks rendered the target writing task more enjoyable and easier to accomplish.
However, our exploratory practice study also demonstrated that TBLT is not free from any defects and not as practical and effective as is suggested in the literature, where it is described as a "psycholinguistically-valid approach."Focusing essentially on meaning and fluency, the TBLT approach, though it remarkably improved the PSTs' morpho-syntactic, socio-cognitive, contextual and rhetorical resources, did not serve to develop their writing mechanics, which affected the overall quality of their writing output.TBLT classroom implementation also proved to be too time-consuming and needs a great deal of preparation on the part of the teacher, especially in developing authentic materials.
Nevertheless, the present study provides a foundation for future collaboration with more colleagues to further explore other possible causes of writing anxiety and solutions, which will pave the way for potential future avenues of research.Moreover, if replicated with a larger population sample including other PSTs from HIHSM or from other Tunisian higher education institutions, this exploratory study could yield more reliable inferences and generalizable findings, adding, as such, to the literature on this topic.

-Communicative Objectives (English for global communication)
➢ express one's opinion on the topic of successful marriage whether face to face or on social media to help newly or future couples and get themselves prepared to conjugal life ➢ work in a group collaboratively and actively to achieve desired outcomes ➢ politely negotiate meaning within a group and be an active listener ➢ confidently report a group work in public ➢ identify some of the features of authentic spoken English (rhythm, intonation, discourse fillers, etc.) to better understand native speakers Teaching Points -Lexis: -Idioms & collocations: -Cultural points: -Grammar: -Writing mechanics: ➢ couple, spouse, wedding, grandpa, grandma, grand children, paternal, maternal, trust, honesty, devotion, cohabitation, adultery, betrayal, etc. ➢ communicate effectively, share responsibilities, get along with each other, tolerate one another, devote/give up one's life to, develop trust ➢ The importance of the marriage institution in society ➢ Combining choppy simple sentences to form compound or complex sentences using appropriate subordinating/coordinating conjunctions ➢ Effective paragraph structure, coherence and cohesion ➢ Appropriate use of punctuation (asyndetic coordinators: the colon and semi-colon in compound sentences; the use of comma after subordinate clauses) Teaching Skills ➢ Primary Skill: Writing ➢ Secondary Skills: Listening , Speaking, Reading, Lexis, Grammar, Tinkering

Preliminary Consideration
➢ Ss already know some basic vocabulary about family relationships (father/Dad; mother/Mum, husband, wife, sister, brother, daughter, grandparents, cousins) ➢ Ss were introduced in the previous lesson to the different types of English sentences (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex) and the difference between them in terms of: the number and type of clauses.

Anticipated Challenges
➢ The video by the native speaker can be challenging and not easily accessible for some of the Ss due to the speaker's quick rhythm, her use of verbless sentences, repetitions, and the interrupting discourse fillers.➢ Some Ss might not be able to fill in the satisfaction survey Google form at the end of the second session for one reason or another (not having smart gadgets, Internet breakdown, etc.)

How to avoid and/or address each of these problem areas
➢ The second exposure to the input will extend the learners' linguistic resources.➢ Print the survey on hard paper to ensure a high responding rate