The Relationship Between EFL Learners Multiple Intelligences And Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

Learning a new language as a "profoundly unsettling psychological proposition" (Guiora, 1983) situates the learners in an anxiety-provoking condition whose intervening effect has been "one of the most accepted phenomena in psychology and education" (Horwitz, 2001). On the other hand, a wide range of factors along with the learnersʹ foreign language classroom anxiety might shadow the learning effectiveness. Among the myriad of factors influencing the second/foreign language learning process, developing the individualsʹ potentials in their language learning experience through discerning their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their multiple intelligences has recently stood out. This study aimed at investigating the possible interface between three constituents of multiple intelligences including linguistic, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types and foreign language classroom anxiety among Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 110 EFL university students were asked to complete the "Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale" and the excerpted items from "Multiple Intelligences Inventory". Pearson product-moment correlation revealed that there is low negative correlation between these intelligence types and foreign language classroom anxiety. Among the components of foreign language classroom anxiety, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation were found to correlate with linguistic intelligence. Additionally, using t-test demonstrated no significant difference between freshman and senior university students regarding their foreign language classroom anxiety.