AN INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHER-INDUCED ANXIETY AND IRANIAN MALE AND FEMALE EFL LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of teacher-induced anxiety on Iranian male and female EFL learners’ language performance in English. Thirty homogeneous elementary students (15 males and 15 females) were selected out of 60 based on the results of the administration of the Oxford Placement Test. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was given to the participants to complete. Subsequently, an English class test including 40 multiple-choice items was administered to evaluate the participants’ general English knowledge. Then the correlation of FLCAS and English class test for both genders was calculated. The findings revealed that there was a strong negative relationship between FLCAS and the English class test. In addition, elementary male learners were more anxious than female learners in learning English as a foreign language. However, the difference was not a statistically significant one. The findings imply that teachers are recommended to be wary of inducing circumstances under which language learners undergo debilitative levels of anxiety as this was shown to be counterproductive.