Communication apprehension has been frequently found in speech classrooms, school meeting, and drama productions. It is a kind of anxiety, established often in the elementary grades, which can deeply influence much or all of a student's oral communication, social skills, and self-esteem. A number of research studies (Segrin& Taylor, 2007) have discovered that students rarely use social and affective factors such interpersonal skill, pair work; therefore, they face a feeling of apprehension to communicate .although this apprehension seems to be a universal factor among language learners, EFL learners seem to suffer more than English as second language (ESL) learners. The importance of communication skills is however increasing in the world, as English language is becoming a world language. The Lack of these natural communication skills in the society as well as teacher- fronted classes has distilled the opportunity from EFL learners to overcome their anxiety in foreign language classrooms. Consequently, EFL learners attend classes with the desire to communicate orally but feel anxious due to shortage of interpersonal skills; therefore, the present study is to investigate the possible effects of interpersonal communication on learner’s oral communication apprehension.The present study proposes the following research questions: Do interpersonal communication skills (i.e., teacher-learner or learner-learner) affect EFL university students’ oral performance?
2. Background
Foreign language scholars have always been concerned with investigation of answers to find the reasons for the great difficulty encountered by a number of students when learning a foreign language where others find it less difficulty (Ganschow, Sparks, Anderson, Javorshy, Skinner & Jon, 1994). Students who face difficulty learning a foreign language are often described as underachievers, or lacking in motivation, or as having language learning disabilities (Huba& Freed, 2000).
Brown (2000) defined the affective domain as “the emotional side of human behavior" (p.143). The term affect is taken from psychology and is related to emotions or feelings. The affective domain is related to the emotional side of human behavior. Understanding human beings feeling, reactions and believing to achieve self- esteem is an important facet of a theory of second language acquisition. It's hard to significantly describe the affective domain because large numbers of variables are derived in light of the emotional side of human behavior in the second language learning process including self-esteem, inhibition, empathy, attitude, motivation and anxiety (Brown, 2000). The affective side of the learner can probably play a very important role in language success or failure (Oxford, 1999). Chastain (1988) claimed that the affective factors play a larger role in developing second/foreign language skills than do the cognitive ones because the emotions control the will to activate or to shut down the cognitive function. She also suggested that fluency depends less on the practice than it does on the emotional side.
A very important aspect of Krashen's (1982) theory is the AffectiveFilter Hypothesis. One of these affective factors is anxiety among attitude and motivation that has received much attention as a variable which has a devastating effect on performance in oral communication. Anxiety is seen in psychology as either a trait (relatively stable personality trait), or as a state (a temporary situation). Thethird type of anxiety is the anxiety which is specific to a situation. It refers to a specific place in which someone is anxious (Horwitz, 2001; MacIntyre& Gardner, 1993) and research in the field of languages have shown that learning a foreign language can be classified as a specific situation. Furthermore, many researchers have insisted that speaking in the target language may make anxiety for EFL learners (e.g., Aida, 1994; Bailey & Savage, 1984; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope,1986). Language learning anxiety may have negative effect on language learning.
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2.1. Different Aspects of Personality Factors
Even though we all know what anxiety is and we all have experienced feeling of anxiousness, anxiety is still not easy to define in a simple sentence (Brown, 2000). Anxiety, as defined by Scovel (1978), is related to feelings like restlessness, uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension or worry. Anxiety is generally seen as a psychological concept. Brown (2000, p. 151) made a distinction between" debilitative" and "facilitative" anxiety, and what Oxford (1999) called "harmful" and "helpful" anxiety. Brown (2000) states that "facilitating anxiety helps learners to overcome the obstacle, to get the job done; it can even simply push students to complete their homework while debilitating anxiety causes the learner to avoid the learning task in order to avoid the source of anxiety" (pp. 151-152).
The relationship between anxiety and education has been established throughout the research world for years (e.g., Gardner &MacIntyre, 1993; Horwitz, 2001; Horwitz &Young, 1990, 1991). Topics like test anxiety are commonplace in today’s classrooms. While for many years society has recognized anxiety in certain fields of study like science and mathematics, the relationship between foreign language studies and situational anxiety only started gaining significant attention twenty years ago. Brown (2000) expressed that the acquisition of a new language is quite interesting though gigantic enterprise, encompassing a wide range of variables that may stem from neurological to psychological, cognitive and affective domains. Human learning is so complicated an issue that is extremely difficult to determine exactly the process taking place during learning. As such, it may seem rather difficult to decide upon a theory of learning. In fact, cognitive, emotional, biological, and other variables influence one's success or failure in learning. Therefore, a theory of learning should consider all the factors and variables affecting the process of learning
2.2. Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal communication skills are part of everyone's daily life personally and professionally. Interpersonal communication skills have impact on individual experience and improve individual and group outcomes in life and work. Interpersonal communication can play an important role in fulfilling several human needs, like the need to belong, the need for competence and the need for autonomy (Baumeister& Leary, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000, 2008). There is large body of research that shows that lack of adequate interpersonal communication skills is related to psychological suffering (e.g., DiTommaso, Brannen-McNulty, Ross &Burgess, 2003; Wenzel, Graff-Dolezal, Macho, &Brendle, 2005).Interpersonal communication skills have a broad range of applications. As with childhood and adolescence, children who develop good interpersonal communication skills perform better academically (Graziano, Reavis, Keane & Calkins, 2007).
3. Method 3.1. Participants
The study 120 second-year students, who were studying at Islamic Azad University of Abadan, were selected of 150 learners through non-random convenience sampling method. Then 90 students were chosen based on two pre-tests of an anxiety test and a speaking proficiency. All EFL learners were majoring in English Translation including males and females. The Participants were sophomore that means all have passed Conversation and Listening I Course. Then they were divided into three equal groups non-randomly. They were one control (i. e., traditional listening and speaking class) and two experimental groups (i.e., teacher-student and student- student).
3.2. Instrumentation