ABSTRACT Despite the growing research on writing motivation, we still lack a clearer picture about gender differences in it and the relative contributions of students’ motivational perceptions to their writing performance. Trying to address these research gaps, this paper reports on a study exploring gender‐related differences and the mediating role of motivational beliefs in Saudi students’ English writing performance. The data of this study were collected from 154 English major students (96 females and 58 males) at a Saudi university. The students performed an argumentative writing task and completed five measures assessing their writing anxiety, apprehension, mastery goal orientation, self‐concept, and self‐efficacy. The independent sample t ‐test analyses revealed that compared to their male peers, the female students had better writing motivational levels. Significant correlations were found among all the five writing motivation variables. On the other hand, the stepwise linear regression analyses also showed that of all the five motivational constructs addressed in the study, writing mastery goal orientation had the strongest impact on students’ writing performance, followed by writing self‐efficacy and self‐concept. The study recommends nurturing students’ perceptions of writing value and learnability, fostering their mastery learning goals and ability beliefs, and taking gender differences into account in the instructional process.
Latif et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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