One of the most challenging issues in language classes is the reluctance of learners to communicate. The term “unwillingness to communicate” (UWTC) is defined as a predisposition which represents a chronic tendency to avoid or devalue oral communication. The main aim of this study is to investigate the factors contributing to university level students’ unwillingness to communicate in English. The participants of this study were selected using the stratified sampling method and consist of 100 students from an English Language Teaching (ELT) Department. The data was collected through a questionnaire examining three dimensions, namely the affective factors, teacher-related factors and environmental factors underlying students’ negative communication behaviour. The results indicated that environmental factors such as rapport among students, class size, materials, noise and classroom atmosphere have the biggest effects with regard to students’ reluctance to communicate in English. On the other hand, affective factors including anxiety, shyness, lack of motivation, lack of vocabulary knowledge, lack of self-confidence, fear of being criticised, topic familiarity, peer pressure and fear of making mistakes have a second highest impact on students’ negative communication behaviour. When the items in the teacher-related category of the questionnaire were analysed in detail the results showed they ranked third most important in this context, with students attributing their reluctance to communicate to teacher attitudes, teacher pressure, lack of teacher support, lack of opportunity to speak English, and the use of the mother tongue and target language.

Corrective feedback has attracted more and more attention as it has an important place in language teaching and learning process (Kim, 2004). In this respect, Sheen and Ellis (2011) define corrective feedback as “the feedback that learners receive on the linguistic errors they make in their oral or written production in a second language (L2)” (p. 593). The main aim of this study is to investigate the most and the least corrective feedback types preferred by primary school and university students. The participants of the study determined by the convenience sampling method comprise 50 primary school and 50 university students. Students are required to mark the feedback types they prefer when they make errors. The results indicate that recasts and asking direct questions are the most favored feedback types chosen by students despite the proficiency level gap.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate whether there is a correlation between university pre-service language teachers’ language aptitude and their English achievement levels. The sample of the study determined by the stratified sampling method consists of 72 pre-service language teachers who are selected from 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th year pre-service language teachers at Language Teaching Department. In this study, the data were collected through “Verbal Aptitude Test” modified from the psychometric success site. In this program, the Spearman Correlation Coefficient analysis was used to elicit the correlation of pre-service language teachers’ language aptitude with their English achievement levels. The results indicated that while there is a moderate relation of pre-service language teachers’ English achievement levels with their rote learning ability and grammatical sensitivity there is a weak relation of phonetic coding ability with language aptitude. Additionally, a slight correlation between pre-service language teachers’ inductive learning ability and their achievement levels is found. All in all, even if the dimensions of language aptitude test pointed to some degree of correlation between the components of language aptitude and English achievement level, the overall results of the language aptitude test indicated that there is a weak correlation between pre-service language teachers’ language aptitude and achievement levels. However, the fact that pre-service language teachers have low language aptitude scores does not guarantee they will be less successful in language learning.