The Relationship between Gender and Iranian University Students’ Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

Foreign language anxiety is defined mainly as distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process. This study was conducted to investigate the levels of FLCA perceived by the different Iranian students of the English department in different universities. This study also aimed at determining the relationship between FL anxiety and gender among male and female students with regard to their educational level and residence. A Persian, piloted and revised version of the FLCA scale (Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope 1986) was used. The results revealed that both male and female students have a high level of FL anxiety but female-students anxiety is higher than male-students . Like gender, age and residence strongly contributed to FL anxiety. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference of the levels of anxiety between the two levels. This study has implications for EFL teachers and presents pedagogically based suggestions to decrease students FL anxiety

Keywords:

Iranian university students , FLCA , anxiety , gender