English language has been perceived differently by ESL learners. Seeing this second language as a tough language leaves most of them with much hassles to survive the challenges. The struggle gets tougher when they are overly committed to excel in English writing, one of the skills that involves various writing elements and mechanics such as vocabulary, syntax, grammar, sentence structure, strategies and lexical. ESL writers who are trapped in adjusting with the language will perceive writing as an additional trouble. Being bombarded with these struggles has caused them to become apprehensive writers. Nevertheless, there must be manifold reasons that lead them to experience such anxiety in writing. This study hence aims to determine some reasons of writing anxiety and to identify apprehensive signs through some features highlighted by the ESL writers. This qualitative study involved six students from a public university in Johor. To obtain the data, semi-structured interview and observation were used as the primary method for the data collection. Based on the findings, it was found that the ESL writers displayed anxious signs that can be associated with writing anxiety with some perceived reasons for the anxiety. Results of this study have given a great impact on teaching and learning of ESL academic writing.
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