Investigating The Influence Of Individual Differences On The Learnes' Willingness To Speak English In Foreign Language Classroms

Résumé: How to communicate in a foreign language has become a crucial problem for speakers from different languages. This is the main factor, which leads to shed light on foreign languages, especially english because it is an international language. Speaking is the most used skill of communication. In the algerian context, there has been a great interest in teaching english but there are problems which learners face step primaril from the difficulty they find in using english. This is due to the differences in the learners' personalities such as shyness, lack of confidence, fear of speaking a foreign language.These differences are personality characteristics which may also accompany learner in their mother language (ML). For instance, shy ML learners may refuse to participate in the classroom as FLs do. Such personality features become embedded in the learners' behaviours and people behave according to how they think. If those beliefs are internalized incorrectly, they will create an underlying problem in the sense that they may avoid speaking. This research deals with a teachers’ and learnersquestionnaire submitted to First- Year english teachers and learners at Larbi Ben M'Hidi university of Oum-El-Bouaghi. It aims at knowing whether the individual differences have an effect on the learners’ willingness to speak english inside the classroom. According to the analysis of the questionnaires, our hypothesis has been confirmed in the sense that individual differences have a negative effect on the learners’ willingness to speak English in foreign language classrooms.

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