Foreign Language Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate: High Level vs. Low Level Iranian EFL Learners

Communication with others is said to be the ultimate goal of language learning. Language learners, however, may sometimes feel so anxious that they are not willing to communicate. The present study thus aimed at probing the relationship between Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) and Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in the EFL classroom. Besides, FLA and WTC of high level vs. low level language learners were compared. The participants, 30 high- and 30 low-intermediate EFL learners from the Iran language institute (ILI) in Gorgan, Iran, were given two questionnaires: Willingness to Communicate Questionnaire (MacIntyre, Baker, Clément, & Conrod, 2001), and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) ( Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope,1986) The results showed no significant relationship between FLA and WTC in the classroom. They also indicated that high level and low level language learners did not differ significantly in terms of FLA and WTC. Finally, it was concluded that two important factors affecting such results could be the age and the number of the participants.