Abstract

Conducted in an intermediate English as a second language (ESL) setting at the high school level in Quebec, this correlational study investigated the relationship between instructor feedback and English second language (L2) students’ writing anxiety. Participants were 53 teenagers in their last year of high school who were required to write an end of year integrative high stakes writing exam. Throughout the five-month period, students were exposed to two practice integrative tasks, written corrective feedback, and five questionnaires to measure language learning anxiety, L2 writing anxiety, and participants’ perception of instructor feedback. The results showed a significant, negative correlation between students’ perceptions of feedback and test anxiety. These findings have pedagogical implications which suggest that anxious learners might benefit from feedback to decrease their anxiety for high stakes exams, provided that the written feedback is clear.