On the Relationship between Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety, Willingness to Communicate and Scholastic Success among Iranian EFL Learners

The present study aimed at investigating the relationships among foreign language classroom anxiety, willingness to communicate, and the scholastic success of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 74 senior and junior students majoring in English Literature and English Translation at Shahid Bahonar university of Kerman participated in this study. To collect the required data, the following questionnaires were applied: Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) and the Willingness to Communicate Scale (MacIntyre et al., 2001) to measure the participants' frequency of time chosen to communicate in English. The participants' GPAs were also used as a measure of their scholastic success.  The results of this study revealed that there was a significant negative relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety and willingness to communicate.  The relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety and scholastic success was also found to be significantly negative. However, a significant positive relationship was found between willingness to communicate and scholastic success.  This study recommends that language teachers identify the causes of language anxiety and try to avoid being one of them.  They should also help their students boost their language achievement by increasing their willingness to communicate and decreasing their anxiety in language classes.