An Exploration of Chinese EFL Learners' Unwillingness to Communicate and Foreign Language Anxiety

This article reports the results of a study of the unwillingness to communicate, and anxiety of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in English language classrooms. A 70-item survey of 547 first-year undergraduate non-English majors revealed that (a) Most of the students were willing to participate in interpersonal conversations, but many of them did not like to risk using/speaking English in class; (b) more than one third of the students felt anxious in their English language classrooms, and they feared being negatively evaluated and were apprehensive about public speaking and tests; (c) their unwillingness to communicate and their foreign language anxiety correlated significantly with each other and with their self-rated English proficiency and access to English; and (d) many of the variables of interest were good predictors of the students' unwillingness to communicate and of their foreign language anxiety, which were also powerful predictors for each other.