Foreign language anxiety and willingness to communicate in the foreign language among university students: a preliminary study

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is being regarded as a concept to account for students’ first language (L1) and second language (L2) communication. The objective of this research was to identify the relationship between foreign language anxiety (FLA) which can be divided into three (3) factors namely (1) learners’ attitude, (2) classroom procedure and (3) language testing on willingness to communicate. Based on the preliminary study, only 86 students of Kulliyyah of Languages and Management, International Islamic University Malaysia who are taking foreign languages such as French, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin were chosen as the respondents of this study. In terms of the direct relationship between FLA and WTC, 1 out of 3 hypotheses was supported in which learners’ attitude has a positive relationship with WTC. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed to provide insights for future research in this area.