Hassan Soodmand Afshar - Associate professor in TEFL, Bu Ali Sina University
Kianoush Kheirabadi - M.A. Student in TEFL at Bu Ali Sina University

The current study aimed at investigating the relationship among willingness to communicate (WTC), self-efficacy, self-regulation, and writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. The instruments utilized were the WTC questionnaire originally developed by MacIntyre, Baker, Clement and Conrod (2001), Self-Efficacy questionnaire developed by Ericson, Soukup, Noonan and Gurn (2016), self-regulated trait (SRT) questionnaire designed by O Neil and Herl (1998), and the second writing task of Cambridge IELTS academic. The data were obtained from 200 Iranian EFL learners at private English language institutes in Hamedan and Sanandaj. Although the design of the study was correlational and mainly quantitative in nature, including the adoption of such data analysis techniques as multiple correlations and multiple regressions, the study also enjoyed a mixed method approach. That is, in addition to the adoption of Likert-scale questionnaires, to triangulate the data, the study also made use of semi-structured interviewsconducted with 30 participants selected randomly from among the participants of the study. The results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between WTC and writing ability of Iranian EFL learners; moreover, a significant positive correlation was also found between selfefficacy and the participants’ writing ability. In addition, the findings indicated that selfregulation was significantly positively related to the participants’ writing ability. Furthermore, the results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that willingness to communicate was the strongest predictor of Iranian EFL learners’ writing ability, a finding also corroborated by the findings of the content analysis of the semi-structured interviews conducted as already mentioned. The in-depth analysis of the results and the implications are presented in the paper.

Iranian EFL learners, writing ability, willingness to communicate, self-efficacy, selfregulation