on the relationship between teacher-student interpersonal relationship and efl learners’ motivation and anxiety

Interpersonal relationships are considered as strong, deep, close associations or friendships between two or more people that may range in duration from brief to enduring and can have strong influence on affective factors particularly motivation and anxiety (baker,grant & marlock, 2008). among the interpersonal relationships in educational settings, the teacher [1] student relationship can have a great effect on students‟ anxiety, motivation and ultimately success. hence current study was aimed at investigating the relationship between teacher [1] students’ interpersonal relationship with learners‟ anxiety and motivation. to do so, 40 male and 58 female iranian advanced students in avatak language institute were asked to participate in the study. for the first step in gathering the required data the questionnaire on teacher-student interaction was given to the participants of the study in each class. one the next session, all the participants in four classes were given the foreign language classroom anxiety scale (flcas) adopted from horwitz, horwitz and cope (1986). and as the last step of data collection procedure in current study, the researcher used student motivational state questionnaire to collect data on students l2 learning motivation. later, all the data were examined and their relationship was investigated. based on the results of the study it was revealed that there is a different type of relationship between efl learners‟ perception of teacher-student interpersonal relationship and their motivation and anxiety in terms of dimensions of teacher-student interpersonal relationship. so that, an increase in dimensions of leadership, helping/friendly, understanding, student freedom, will lead to an increase in the motivation level and a considerable decrease in learners‟ anxiety. in addition, as increase in uncertain, dissatisfied, admonishing, and strict dimensions causes a considerable decrease in the motivation level and increase in learners‟ anxiety level. the findings of the study can be used by the language instructors and teachers knowing that their positive interpersonal relation really matters and is highly effective enhancing their teaching practice making students motivated and less anxious who are ready and eager to learn. furthermore, the results of the study can also help teacher trainers to instruct the teachers how to assess their relationship with students and find a positive balance in order to take advantage of reducing the effect of affective filters such as anxiety to improve the quality of their class.