the relationship between anxiety as an individual difference and iranian efl learners’ speaking and writing skills in online instruction

The present research aimed at investigating the contributions of anxiety on iranian efl productive skills through online instruction. to this end, a total sample of 114 iranian male and female efl pre-intermediate-level learners who were studying english at two language institutes in isfahan were selected. participants were selected based on the result of the opt and they were later randomly divided into experimental and control group. in the control group which consisted of around 54 students, the new lessons were taught through the traditional in person classroom instruction. on the contrary, in the experimental group which contained about 60 participants the new lessons were taught online by their teacher. as for the data collection procedure, at the beginning of the experiment they took the pretests of ielts speaking and writing tests. at the end of the experiment, the anxiety questionnaire and the post tests of ielts speaking and writing tests were taken from the participants. to examine the relationship between the variables and analyze the differences, a series of statistics including correlation coefficient and t-test, were employed. it was found that there was a significant relationship between efl learners’ anxiety in online class and their efl achievement of productive skills and since the correlation was negative, any increase in the scores of the anxiety questionnaire (the higher the level of anxiety), would decrease the scores of productive skills. in addition, it was found that there was a significant difference between male and female participants' anxiety level in online class and women experienced higher amount of anxiety. based on the findings, efl teachers are advised to create a less intimidating atmosphere where students can learn better and easily to facilitate their willingness for participating throughout the learning process.