Willingness to Communicate and Identity Styles of Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the relationship between willingness to communicate (WTC) and identity styles of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 186 language learners at Alpha Language Center, Ilam. Three measures of willingness to communicate, communication apprehension (CA), and self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) developed by McCroskey and his colleagues (1987, 1988, 1992) and Identity Styles Inventory (ISI) developed by Berzonskey (1990) were given to the students. Correlation analysis indicated that WTC and self-perceived communication competence are positively correlated with informative and normative identity styles, while negatively correlated with diffuse-avoidance. Findings also indicated that CA is positively correlated with diffuse-avoidance and negatively correlated with informative and normative identity style.