Benefits of Freewriting in An EFL Academic Writing Classroom

Benefits of Freewriting in an EFL
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/elt/ccaa018/5850271 by Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek user on 03 June 2020

Academic Writing Classroom
Jeongyeon Park
This study explores possible benefits of freewriting for EFL students’ writing
anxiety and fluency. Thirty university students who were enrolled in an academic
writing class participated in the study. Pre- and post-writing anxiety surveys,
freewritings, pre- and post-essays, and student reflections were collected as data.
The study found that EFL students experience varying degrees of writing anxiety,
and anxious students tended to perform poorly on the writing test. Analysis of
540 freewritings revealed that all students’ fluency improved as the semester
progressed, showing a similar trend. Students generally reported positive
attitudes toward the freewriting activity. They largely agreed that it improved
their confidence, lessened their fear of evaluation, and deepened their thinking
skills, but they disliked the absence of feedback, the topic selection, and the
activity’s time limits. Benefits, possible adaptations, and the pedagogic value of
freewriting were also discussed in the study.
Introduction Although language teachers generally agree that both fluency and accuracy
are important in writing development (Casanave 2004), accuracy still
takes up a large part of writing instruction, especially in EFL contexts
where a rigid curriculum is predetermined and teaching grammar seems
inevitable (Rivers 2007). The pressure to produce ‘accurate’ language
can make English writing an unpleasant experience. Being caught up
with language form rather than content can keep students from freely
putting their thoughts on to paper. Along with a lack of writing practice,
such pressure tends to aggravate writers’ block, leading to decreased
confidence, distaste, or anxiety about the act of L2 writing. Writing
teachers have developed various approaches to break the vicious cycle that
many learners experience. Freewriting is one such approach, and while
there is research that suggests it improves the quality and fluency of L1
writing, few studies on freewriting have been conducted in EFL settings
(Hwang 2010; Penn and Lim 2016). We know little about the effectiveness
of freewriting and what students think of it, especially in higher EFL
education contexts. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the
effects of freewriting on students’ writing anxiety and writing fluency in
an EFL university academic writing class. The study’s findings indicate
that freewriting can be a powerful pedagogic tool in the EFL writing
classroom.
ELT Journal; doi:10.1093/elt/ccaa018 Page 1 of 9

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Literature review Freewriting is often defined as a quick writing activity, conducted with
few pauses and no editing, that helps writers generate ideas. Since
Peter Elbow, an authoritative figure in L1 writing research, introduced

this writing technique in the 1990s, it has been advocated as a useful
instructional tool in the writing classroom. Many EFL writing teachers
have heard students complain about ‘not being able to start’ or ‘not having
much to say’ when given a piece of paper and a topic. We have learnt
that these reactions are largely related to students’ lack of confidence,
stemming from either their insufficient L2 knowledge or fear of
evaluation. Students are often insecure about spelling, handwriting, and
sentence or paragraph construction, which results in unwillingness or
a negative attitude about writing (Harmer 2004). Grading pressure also
undermines motivation as well as increasing writing anxiety (Liao and
Wong 2010). In this respect, freewriting may help students focus on the
act of writing itself, by easing the mental burden of thinking of the right
words (Elbow 1989). Moreover, for students who are less keen on writing
or lack confidence, it is important to help them feel comfortable about
English writing so that they are willing to participate in any kind of writing
activity. Therefore, creating engaging writing tasks is crucial to involve
students ‘not just intellectually but emotionally’ (Harmer 2004: 62). Some
researchers criticize freewriting for its lack of focus and control, but Elbow
(2000) argues strongly that it liberates and empowers students. Above all,
it can make the writing process more enjoyable.
L2 freewriting research has reported positive effects on fluency as well as
confidence (Casanave 2004; Harmer 2004). For instance, Hwang (2010)
conducted a case study with eight EFL college-level students over eight
weeks. Students were given 15 minutes to write on a given topic, and they
received neither feedback nor correction. The students’ words-per-minute
(WPM) gradually increased from 6.35 (period 1) to 10.22 (period 4), with
the greatest improvement taking place in the first two periods. At the
end of the study, the participants reported that the freewriting practice
had increased their confidence in their English writing. Choi (2012)
compared the effectiveness of two pre-writing activities: freewriting and
clustering1. The freewriters transferred more ideas to their main writing
from the pre-writing activity, but doing so did not lead to higher scores.
In fact, Choi found no statistically significant difference in the quality
of the two groups’ production, although she concluded that clustering
led to better L2 writing performance, including idea generation. The
freewriting group, however, evaluated freewriting more positively than
the clustering group evaluated clustering as a useful pre-writing activity.
More recently, Penn and Lim (2016) explored whether freewriting can
facilitate the development of L1-Korean EFL students’ overall English
proficiency. The study found that 51 students who freewrote regularly
for one semester outperformed a control group in the four language
skills. More specifically, the largest effect was found in writing; lexical
variability and lexical density as well as text length improved as the
semester progressed. A less traditional freewriting study was conducted by
Li (2007), who engaged students in intensive freewriting in an academic
writing classroom for two weeks, with the goal of using the practice of
freewriting to deepen their understanding of academic writing. The topics
Page 2 of 9 Jeongyeon Park

were related to the focus of each class’s lesson. The students also read
each other’s writing and provided comments and responses. Li (ibid.)
reported that freewriting helped the students understand their weaknesses

and strengths, and boosted their confidence as writers.
Although freewriting has been argued to reduce writing anxiety and
increase writing fluency, little empirical research has been conducted in
EFL settings to support the claim. Therefore, the following three questions
are examined in this study, with the hope of providing pedagogically
grounded evidence for writing teachers:
RQ1 Is there a relationship between students’ writing anxiety and performance?
RQ2 Does freewriting improve students’ writing fluency over one semester, and if
so, is the improvement affected by their fluency level?
RQ3 What are students’ attitudes toward freewriting in the EAP writing classroom?
Methods Thirty EFL students (male = 2; female = 28) participated in the study.

Participants They were all majoring in English and were enrolled in an EAP writing
course at a university in Korea. In general, the participants showed a low
level of confidence in their English writing, and only a few of them had
ever written a whole essay in English. As the writing class was not level
differentiated, a diagnostic writing test was administered on the first day
of class.
Materials and data Four types of data were collected: essay tests (pre and post), a writing
analysis anxiety survey (pre and post), freewritings, and reflections. First, a
30-minute essay test was conducted at week 1 (pre-test) and at week 14
(post-test) to explore students’ general English writing ability and to assess
their improvement over one semester. Two raters evaluated the essays
using the TOEFL independent writing rubric, in which components of
writing are rated from 1 (low or poor performance) to 5 (high or great
performance). The interrater agreement rate was initially 94 per cent and
reached 100 per cent after discussion.
Second, a writing anxiety survey was designed by adapting a survey by
Cheng, Horwitz, and Schallert (1999). It contained 20 items for students
to rate on a 5-point Likert scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
The survey covered three components of writing anxiety: aversiveness, low
self-confidence, and evaluation apprehension. Out of 20, eight items were
reverse-scored so that the higher score represents higher writing anxiety.
High internal consistency of the survey items was achieved (Cronbach’s α:
pre = 0.963; post = 0.951).
Third, students completed 18 freewriting sessions over 12 weeks,
amounting to 540 writing samples in total. To measure fluency, the
total number of words and the words per minute (WPM) were used.
Counting the number of words students can write within a time limit is
commonly used to measure fluency. Students kept their freewritings in
individual notebooks, which they turned in at the end of the semester as
a portfolio. The topic for each week was chosen by students in pairs. They
were advised to choose a general topic that would not require specific
knowledge or a particular background, and that their classmates would
find relatable and thus meaningful. Topics included, for example, ‘Write
Benefits of Freewriting in an EFL Academic Writing Classroom Page 3 of 9

about the person or thing that inspires you most’ and ‘Where do you see
yourself in five years?’
Fourth, when turning in their collection of freewritings, they were

asked to submit a short reflection about their experience as well. For the
reflection, the students were encouraged to write freely about any of their
ideas or opinions, negative or positive, about freewriting. The reflections
were analysed to explore advantages and/or disadvantages of freewriting
from the students’ perspective.
Procedure The writing class met twice a week for one academic semester,
amounting to 150 minutes per week. The class focused on what most
academic writing classes do: thesis, organization, content, language, and
punctuation. The class was designed to begin practising writing at the
sentence and paragraph level, and to gradually progress to writing a whole
essay. Freewriting was a regular class activity. For the first freewriting
session, the teacher conducted a brief workshop to share a few models of
freewriting, the procedures, and potential benefits. Referring to the nine
ground rules for freewriting proposed by Jacobs (1986), the following
simple steps were taken in each freewriting session.
a) The freewriting activity takes place at the beginning of every class.
When students come to class, they sit down and prepare themselves for
getting into the writing mood.
b) While the teacher sets the timer, the students write down the topic on
the board and briefly explain why they chose the particular topic to help
their classmates relate. This was to help ‘start thoughts flowing’ (Jacobs
ibid.: 285).
c) Students are given 10 minutes to write about the topic. In every session,
the students are reminded to keep writing until the time is up, not to
pay too much attention to language form, and that their writing would
not be graded.
d) Students are allowed to substitute an L1 word if they cannot think of
words in the L2. This is to prevent them stopping while writing. EFL
students tend to have an overreliance on dictionaries, which could
distract their flow and bring their attention back to language forms.
e) When the time is up, students count the total number of words and
mark it on their individual freewriting progress charts. The reason for
these charts is to help students feel a sense of achievement over time.
f) Finally, students are given 3 minutes to read what they have written,
and to circle or underline the parts, or ideas, that they like the most.
Results and discussion Referring to the TOEFL writing rubric, students on average performed
Writing performance and relatively poorly on the pre-essay test, with an average score of 2.43 out of
anxiety 5. They showed the problems common to many EFL writers: insufficient
words, inappropriate word choice, syntactic errors, disorganization, and
lack of idea development. As for anxiety, the pre-survey results indicate
that individual students began the class with varying degrees of writing
anxiety (min = 1.5, max = 4.85). Students’ pre-essay scores were negatively
correlated with their writing anxiety, indicating that students with a
high level of anxiety tended to perform poorly on the essay test (Pearson
product–moment correlation coefficient: r = –0.512). More specifically, a

categorical analysis showed that students did not seem to dislike writing
per se (see Figure 1). Rather, lack of confidence and fear of evaluation
contributed most to their anxiety.

The post-essay and post-survey showed improved scores and lessened
anxiety. On the post-essay, students’ overall scores improved by 0.8. One
of the noticeable improvements was the increased number of words
with supporting details and exemplification. In addition, students’
general level of anxiety toward English writing had lessened after one
semester, decreasing by 0.27 on the post-survey. These improvements
in both writing performance and anxiety were statistically significant. In
particular, their distaste for English writing decreased the most, by 0.36.
Their lack of confidence and fear of evaluation also decreased, by 0.26 and
0.21, respectively.
While the students showed statistically significant improvements in
writing and writing anxiety after one semester, their improved writing
performance cannot be solely attributed to freewriting, as the students
also engaged in writing lessons each week. Therefore, their freewriting
itself and their opinions and reactions were further explored.
Writing fluency To examine changes in fluency over the semester, the freewritings were
divided into six stage periods (see Figure 2). The bar graph shows their
general tendency: in stage 1, from the first to the third freewriting, the
students wrote, on average, 100.77 words in 10 minutes. This equals
10.08 WPM, which indicates that it took them a relatively long time to put
their thoughts into words, whether they were thinking about the content
or language forms. As the semester progressed, their total number of
words and WPM increased, and by period 6 they were able to write about
150 words in 10 minutes (15 WPM); this is an improvement of 49.14
words, which can be considered remarkable progress.
To explore differences among fluency groups, the 30 students were
divided into three groups based on the total number of words in their
first freewriting: low (below 80 words: 8 students), mid (81–99 words:
14 students), and high (above 100 words: 8 students). Figure 3 shows the
improvement in fluency in the freewriting of these three fluency groups.
All three groups showed a similar trend of increased fluency, but the
mid-fluency group made the most progress between period 1 and period
3, with a positive change of about 50 words. After that, however, their
fluency remained almost the same. The low-fluency group progressed
more steadily, although their total number of words remained very low.
f i g u r e  1
English writing anxiety:
pre- and post-surveys

f i g u r e  2
Improvement in freewriting
fluency (total number of
words)
f i g u r e  3
Improvement of freewriting
fluency in three fluency
groups
The high-fluency group initially produced twice as many words as the

low-fluency group, and while the gap between these two groups became
smaller, there was still a difference of about 70 words between them at
period 6. Even though the students’ improved writing fluency may have
resulted from academic writing instruction or freewriting, or both, it is
undeniable that the more students write, the more fluent they become
(Harmer 2004). More opportunities to write mean more chances to
practise expressions and expand their repertoires, leading to greater ease
in English writing.
Students’ reactions to The participants’ reactions to freewriting were examined by analysing
freewriting their reflection papers. At the end of the semester, students were asked
to write their thoughts about freewriting, including likes, dislikes,
usefulness, and suggestions. Most of the comments were positive, and
the students frequently made use of phrases such as: ‘relieved fear about
English writing’, ‘improved writing skills’, ‘more words’, ‘great practice’,
‘easy topics’, ‘helpful’, ‘increased confidence’, ‘enjoyable’, and ‘writing
fast’.
Several representative excerpts from student comments follow:
If there was no freewriting, I would not have time to write in my time.
Also, because of freewriting, I think my writing skill got much better
than before. I got to express my thoughts in words. As I look at the
graph of the counting numbers of words, I also felt very impressed

about myself. I did not know I could write this much. I was surprised
and proud at the same time.
At first, when I wrote the journal, I thought about grammar parts and

spelling a lot and I needed to spend a lot of time writing the essay
perfectly. As time goes by, when I wrote that, I didn’t think about them
and I can express my opinion and thinking naturally. Moreover, when
I checked my chart progress, I am satisfied and I got confidence of
English.
My goal was ‘be confident and don’t be afraid to express my emotion
and thoughts’ at the beginning. I’m still afraid but it’s much better than
my first class. It is really helpful. The best thing of freewriting is that no
one reads my writing. So I just write my own opinion and I don’t care
about my grammar.
With accumulated writing time and practice, students seemed to
realize the power and value of freewriting. In particular, many students
mentioned that their fear of English writing had weakened and that their
interest in it had strengthened; for example, ‘Although writing is still
difficult, fear of blank paper has decreased’ and ‘The stress of writing
decreased and the interest of it became high.’ They also perceived it as
good writing practice, and commented that they gradually got more used
to writing. Above all, they mentioned the fact that because freewriting
is not meant to be graded, they wrote more openly and felt freedom of
expression. This appeared to motivate them to continue freewriting.
In addition, in line with the findings reported by Penn and Lim (2016),
several students mentioned that freewriting helped them improve their
English speaking. This supports the argument advanced by Rivers (2007)
that freewriting ‘bridges the gap’ between how a person speaks and writes,
and therefore can be implemented usefully in the classroom, where
speaking opportunities are limited. More interestingly, several students
reflected that freewriting not only strengthened their English writing but
also enhanced their thinking skills; for example: ‘The ability of thinking
constantly has improved’ and ‘Freewriting makes me imagine widely
and deeply. It is important to think about some topics deeply because
imagination and power of thinking is really major points in writing.’
Negative reactions also appeared in their reflections, mainly in relation to
the time limit, the topic choices, and the absence of feedback; for example:
‘I didn’t like the 10-minute time limit. It’s too short. How many words
I can write in 10 minutes depends on the topic and my clear head’ and
‘My writing seems to be greatly influenced by the topic.’ A time limit
is considered necessary in freewriting to push students to think in the
L2 and thus to maximize the benefit (Rivers 2007), but it still seems to
cause uneasiness for some students. Moreover, a few students were still
worried about making errors and wanted their freewritings to be checked
and corrected. They expressed the belief that feedback from the teacher or
peers once a week would bring about more improvement in their writing.
Conclusions and In this study, a freewriting activity was implemented over one academic
pedagogic implications semester with the aim of lessening EFL students’ anxiety about English
writing, thereby improving their fluency along the way. The results

showed that students’ writing anxiety significantly decreased and that
their post-essays’ quality also improved significantly, showing a negative
correlation (RQ1). Further, the total number of words and WPM they

produced gradually increased in all three fluency groups as the semester
progressed (RQ2). Above all, most students showed a favourable attitude
toward freewriting by the end of the semester; students perceived it as
useful in increasing their confidence, lowering their fear of evaluation,
and encouraging regular writing practice (RQ3).
Students’ progress and reflections do seem to indicate a positive influence
of freewriting, but caution is required to interpret these findings. As
mentioned, students’ writing anxiety and fluency could have been
affected by the academic writing instruction; thus, the improvement in
their post-essays cannot be solely attributed to freewriting. Including
a no-freewriting control group would have provided more insightful
results. However, the main goal of the study was to explore any benefits
that freewriting could bring to an EFL academic writing classroom.
Increased confidence along with lowered anxiety seem to have contributed
to students’ achievement, which further led many of them to express a
willingness to continue freewriting by themselves after the course was
finished. Given that one of the key interests of L2 writing pedagogy is to
promote autonomous writers, the freewriting activity may have value as
a potential way of empowering and helping students gain ownership of
their writing as EFL writers.
The participants seemed content with how the freewriting was done,
but, as somewhat expected, a few students expressed concerns about its
usefulness due to the absence of feedback. Although the students were
informed during the first freewriting session’s initial workshop that the
purpose of the activity was to assist them to generate ideas and produce
more words within the given time, not to increase their grammatical
accuracy, some students who are particularly concerned about language
errors still appreciate correction. In this sense, writing teachers can adapt
the steps taken in the present study to meet the needs of their settings, by,
for example, increasing the time, changing the number of freewritings per
week, or changing the way of selecting the topic. Adding a short pre- or
post-pair or group conversation about the topic to each session might be
another way to increase student engagement. In addition, if time allows,
teachers could collect students’ freewriting once or twice a semester and
provide general feedback on content or typical language errors, if it seems
that focusing on fluency over accuracy does not meet students’ needs
or the demands of the educational setting (Casanave 2004; Li 2007;
Paltridge et al. 2009). However, content or idea generation should be
given priority over language form in order not to detract from the original
purpose of freewriting. Freewriting can also be used at the end of a class
to summarize a lesson (writing-for-learning) or it can be integrated with
other skills of language (see Park 2016 on freewriting integrated with
extensive reading). This study does not argue that freewriting is the one
and only solution to EFL writers’ problems; rather, it attempts to show
how allocating a small amount of class time to a regular freewriting
practice can have marked benefits for struggling EFL writers, such as
forming a writing habit, improving writing fluency, increasing confidence,

and reducing writing apprehension. The pedagogic value of freewriting
deserves more investigation; for example, comparison of writing-for-
writing and writing-for-learning. Nevertheless, this study’s results strongly

support the idea that freewriting in the long term can play a pivotal role
in building autonomous L2 writers, and be a tool in writing teachers’
constant efforts to help students enjoy writing and take pride in their
achievements, big or small (Harmer 2004).
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Dong-A University research fund.
Final version received December 2019
Note Li, L. Y. 2007. ‘Exploring the use of focused

1 In clustering, students write their ideas about a freewriting in developing academic writing’. Journal
topic in a circle, grouping relevant ideas together of University Teaching & Learning Practice 4/1: 40–53.
(Choi 2012: 576). Liao, M. T. and C. T. Wong. 2010. ‘Effects of dialogue
journals on L2 students’ writing fluency, reflections,
anxiety, and motivation’. Reflections on English
References Language Teaching 9/2: 139–70.
Casanave, C. P. 2004. Controversies in Second Paltridge, B., L. Harbon, D. Hirsh, H. Shen,
Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research M. Stevenson, A. Phakiti, and L. Woodrow. 2009.
and Instruction. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Teaching Academic Writing: An Introduction for
Michigan Press. Teachers of Second Language Writers. Ann Arbor, MI:
Cheng, Y. S., E. K. Horwitz, and D. L. Schallert. 1999. University of Michigan Press.
‘Language anxiety: differentiating writing and Park, J. 2016. ‘Integrating reading and writing
speaking components’. Language Learning 49/3: through extensive reading’. ELT Journal 70/3:287–95.
417–46. Penn, S. and H. W. Lim. 2016. ‘The effects of
Choi, Y. H. 2012. ‘Prewriting tasks in L2 writing’. freewriting exercises on adult Korean students’
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics 12/3: English learning’. Journal of AsiaTEFL 13/4: 313–30.
567–600. Rivers, D. J. 2007. ‘Free-writing as an expressive
Elbow, P. 1989. ‘Toward a phenomenology of communication tool for Japanese English learners’.
freewriting’. Journal of Basic Writing 8/2: 42–71. The Language Teacher 31/11: 9–12.
Elbow, P. 2000. Everyone Can Write. Essays Toward a
Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing. New
York: Oxford University Press. The author
Harmer, J. 2004. How to Teach Writing. Harlow: Jeongyeon Park holds a PhD in Second Language Studies
Longman. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and currently
Hwang, J. A. 2010. ‘A case study of the influence of works as an assistant professor at Dong-A University in
freewriting on writing fluency and confidence of EFL South Korea. Her research interests include the teaching
college-level students’. University of Hawai'i Second of reading and writing in academic settings, the effects
Language Studies Paper 28/2: 97–134. of individual differences on language learning, and
Jacobs, G. 1986. ‘Quickwriting: a technique for language pedagogy in EFL settings.
invention in writing’. ELT Journal 40/4: 282–90. Email: jpark0903@gmail.com

Benefits of Freewriting in An EFL Academic Writing Classroom

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Benefits of Freewriting in An EFL Academic Writing Classroom

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Benefits of Freewriting in an EFL

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/elt/ccaa018/5850271 by Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek user on 03 June 2020

ELT Journal; doi:10.1093/elt/ccaa018 Page 1 of 9

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/elt/ccaa018/5850271 by Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek user on 03 June 2020

Page 2 of 9 Jeongyeon Park

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/eltj/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/elt/ccaa018/5850271 by Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek user on 03 June 2020

Methods Thirty EFL students (male = 2; female = 28) participated in the study.