The Relationship among EFL Learners' Self-Directed Learning, Resilience, and Willingness to Communicate

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Maryam Oveisi ¹ , Mania Nosratinia ²

1 - MA in TEFL, English Department, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor, English Department, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2020-02-15 Accepted : 2020-02-15 Published : 2019-10-01

Keywords: self-directed learning, resilience, Willingness to communicate,

Abstract :

The present study aspired to scrutinize the relationship among EFL learners' Self-directed Learning (SL), Resilience (RE), and Willingness to Communicate (WTC). To accomplish this purpose, 124 male and female undergraduate EFL learners, within the age range of 20 to 32, were selected through convenience sampling. These EFL learners were asked to fill in three questionnaires, namely the SL Questionnaire (Williamson, 2007), the RE questionnaire (Wagnild & Young, 1993), and the WTC questionnaire (MacIntyre, Baker, Clément, & Conrod, 2001). The results manifested that there was a significant and positive correlation between RE and WTC, SL and WTC, and RE and SL. Further- more, in order to compare RE and SL in terms of predicting WTC, a regression analysis was con- ducted, the results of which indicated that SL makes the strongest statistically significant unique con- tribution to predicting WTC. Meanwhile, RE turned out to be the second significant predictor of WTC. This highlighted the significance of enabling EFL learners to operate independently and be- come self-directed language learners.

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