examining the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and communication strategies by iranian efl learners

the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between fear of negative evaluation (fne) and communication strategies (css) among iranian efl learners. it was aimed to examine the differences in the use of communication strategies between speakers with high or low degree of fear of negative evaluation. the current study was a case study consisting of 10 english learners at pre-intermediate level at shokouh language institute in mashhad, iran. the participants scoring high or low on fear of negative evaluation were all female and ranged in age from 14 to 17 with an average of 16. the fne questionnaire developed by watson and friend (1969) was used for the purpose of understanding the degree of participants’ fear of negative evaluation. to investigate the type and frequency of communication strategies used by the participants, the class was observed for 20 sessions by the researcher. the data elicited from audio recordings of oral speaking tasks to identify communication strategies were used. the findings showed that the subjects employed ten types of communication strategies specified by tarone (1980), faerch and kasper (1983), and clennell (1995).