An Investigation of the Relationship Between Age and Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in L2: A Case of Intermediate Iranian EFL Learners

Following the 1960s and paradigm shift from teaching to learning, many researchers began to explore factors affecting communicative competence in the L2. One of these learner variables which exerts a great influence upon second language learning is willingness to communicate. Accordingly, the present study attempted to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL Learners’ age and their willingness to communicate (WTC). To this end, 30 upper Intermediate learners (19 females and 11 males) were randomly selected from an English language Institute in Hamedan. Participants were asked to fill out the WTC questionnaire developed by MacIntyre et al. (2001). The results revealed that there is not a significant relationship between age and WTC of the participants. Therefore, to explore whether age has any influence on the WTC performance, four age groups were defined. Before running the ANOVA test, the homogeneity of variance test was examined. The results of the ANOVA test revealed that there is no difference between the participants. The results have beneficial implications for teaching methodology and syllabus design.