The Relationship between Language Proficiency and Willingness to Communicate in English in an Iranian EFL Context

Abstract

This study intended to find out the relationship between language proficiency and willingness to communicate WTC in English in an Iranian EFL context. To this end, 60 Iranian English learners were selected who were all females and from different age groups and were intermediate and advanced level students, ranging from 15 to 22. They were given a TOEFL proficiency test to see how proficient they were. Then, a WTC questionnaire was given to the participants which was a likert-type questionnaire the participants' choices to each question showed their degree of willingness to communicate. Observation was used to see how willing the participants were in real classroom context. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between learners' proficiency levels and their WTC. In other words, advanced level learners were more willing to communicate than intermediate level learners. It was also shown that school students and university students did not have any significant difference in terms of their WTC. An interesting point was that no significant differences were found between the age parameter and the participants' WTC.