Investigating the Relationship of Willingness to Communicate with Learning Styles in Iranian EFL Learners

Willingness to communicate can be regarded as part of individual differences that has attaineda lot of attention in recent years in the domain of second language learning. In fact, the issue of willingness to communicate is considered as a complicated construct and is under the effect of other individual differences like learning styles. In general, having the ability to start the process of communication in educational situations of learning a second language is regarded to be a critical factor for successful learning. There are various learning styles considering individual differences.Different learners bring with themselves their special learning styles and preferences. In order to reach a good result in educational contexts, it seems necessary for the instructor to be familiar with learning styles that each learner brings with him/herself to the class. This study attempted to investigate the relationship between willingness to communicate and learning styles of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 78 EFL learners who studied English in Iran Language Institute, Karaj Branch. Two questionnaires including Ehrman and Leaver's questionnaire of learning style (2003), and Willingness to Communicate Questionnaire were used as instruments for gathering data. The results indicated that there is a significant relationship between the willingness to communicate and learning styles of the Iranian EFL learners.