the interplay among language learning enjoyment, classroom anxiety, and students’ achievement

This study was an attempt to explore anxiety and enjoyment among iranian efl university students and to investigate the possible relationship between foreign language enjoyment (fle) and foreign language classroom anxiety (flca) and how they may relate to students achievement. it also examined the difference between ba/bs and ma/ms students in terms of their fle and flca. the data were collected from 81 iranian efl students studying at golestan institute of higher education in gorgan, golestan province, iran. foreign language enjoyment scale (fles) (dewaele & macintyre, 2014) and foreign language classroom anxiety scale (flcas) (horwitz, horwitz, & cope, 1986) were utilized to measure students enjoyment and anxiety, respectively. the results of spearman s rank correlation revealed that there was no significant relationship between fle and flca. also, it was found out that fle and achievement were not significantly correlated. furthermore, there was no significant relationship between flca and achievement. as for the results of the regression analysis, no significant relationship was found between fle, flca, and achievement. that is, the students achievement could not be predicted based on their fle and flca. nevertheless, the results of independent samples t-test showed that there was a significant difference between ba/bs and ma/ms students in terms of fle. yet, the results of mann–whitney u test indicated no significant different between ba/bs and ma/ms students in terms of their flca level. the obtained results are discussed in the light of the relevant literature.