Effects of the Fundamental Concepts of Computational Thinking on Students’ Anxiety and Motivation toward K-12 English Writing
Open accessAbstract
Computational thinking (CT) skills are now a key part of everyday life and work, and CT has been incorporated into K-12 curricula worldwide. Combining the fundamental concepts of CT with English writing constitutes an innovative and sustainable learning strategy. However, few academic studies have examined the incorporation of CT into English writing. English writing frequently generates excessive stress and anxiety among students, yet motivation can mitigate the negative effect of anxiety. This study investigated the effects of the fundamental concepts of CT on reducing writing anxiety and increasing motivation toward English writing. A quasi-experimental design was applied, and data were collected from experimental and control groups through writing anxiety and motivation questionnaires. The results indicated that the fundamental concepts of CT exerted a more significant influence on the dimensions of writing anxiety and motivation than did a conventional learning method. In conclusion, the fundamental concepts of CT promoted organized and structured English writing, increased students’ writing motivation, and reduced their writing anxiety.
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Integrating CT concepts into the learning process increases student motivation towards learning.
“A similar study investigated the integration of CT concepts into the learning process (Peng et al. 2023).Their results indicated that their instructional strategies effectively increased student motivation towards learning.”
From Incorporating Computational Thinking Into Virtual Laboratories to Enhance Learning Motivation, Engagement, and Higher‐Order Thinking Skills (2025) · cites this paper as Peng et al. 2023
Section 5.2 reports that instruction using fundamental CT concepts enhanced students’ writing motivation more than conventional teaching. The citing sentence broadens this finding to motivation toward learning generally; the study’s reported result concerns English writing. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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“Interventions targeting self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in one’s abilities) (Pilotti et al., 2023; Sabti et al., 2019) and metacognition (Allmnakrah & Evers, 2020; Yeh, 2015) may also be helpful in addition to a heavier reliance on computational thinking skill development (Peng et al., 2023).”
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“The initial step before implementing any action is to evaluate the level of CTS; hence, a test instrument is needed to assess the level of CTS [34], [35].”
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- Authors
- Peng, H.-H., Murti, A. T., Silitonga, L. M., & Wu, T.-T.
- Affiliations
- National Changhua University of Education (TW)
- National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (TW)
- Universitas PGRI Semarang (ID)
- Corresponding author
- Wu, Ting-Ting
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2023-03-28
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 5855
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4361225936
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 3.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministry of Science and Technology Taiwan (MOST 110-2511-H-224-003-MY3, MOST 111-2628-H-224-001-MY3)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Education › Writing and Handwriting Education
- Keywords
- computational thinking, writing anxiety, writing motivation, English writing, K-12 education, writing instruction, structured writing
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