Structured Writing for Alleviating Writing Anxiety: The Four-Square Method in Action

Proficient writing skills are essential for achieving success in scholarly endeavors. When writing, Pakistani students encounter a variety of problems, such as linguistic, social, cognitive, and psychological ones. To address writing-related problems, writing instructors must employ suitable teaching techniques and tactics (Ajmal & Aziz & Anwar, 2023). The usual teacher-centered Product Approach, which emphasizes memorizing pre-made responses, is used to instruct the majority of Pakistani ESL writing students. This leads to a number of difficulties for the students, one of which being ESL writing anxiety. This quasi-experimental study aims to investigate the effects of Four-Square Writing Method (FSWM) on writing anxiety among ESL 1st year students who are also called pre-university students in Pakistan. The FSWM decreased high writing anxiety to the low writing anxiety in the experimental group by using a 22-item multidimensional questionnaire, the Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (SLWAI). The findings imply that Pakistani students' writing anxiety can be effectively reduced by using the FSWM strategy.