What motivates Chinese children to write: Love, fear, or both?

Abstract

The objective - It is widely acknowledged that emotion plays an important role in the writing process. Compared to research on the cognitive aspects of the writing processes, empirical research focusing on the affect of writing is scarce. This study investigated the association of two measures of affect (i.e., value of writing and writing apprehension) and writing performance in Chinese children. Value of writing refers to a person’s positive emotions (including interest and pleasure) involved in writing. Writing apprehension refers to a person’s tendency to avoid evaluative writing situations. Methods – Three hundred and ninety eight Chinese children in middle elementary grades completed cognitive-linguistic measures (including syntactic skills and word dictation), writing-affect measures (i.e., value of writing and writing apprehension) and a narrative writing measure. Results – Between-grade differences were significant only in cognitive-linguistic and writing measures, but not in writing-affect measures. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis results showed that both value of writing and writing apprehension are significant unique predictors of children’s writing quality and writing fluency (i.e. total number of words written) even after controlling for children’s performance in the cognitive-linguistic measures. Conclusions – These findings underscore the importance of both cognitive and affective factors in writing in children. Both affirmative and negative emotions influence Chinese children’s motivation to write.