The Relationship between EFL Teachers’ Self and other Oriented Perfectionism and their Students’ anxiety levels

Much concern has been raised about the ability of non-native English teachers to become proficient in a language that is not their own and how much they must expect from their students. The existence of factors such as perfectionism (teachers who expect themselves and their students to master the language and content as perfect as possible) among teachers will undeniably impact the level of anxiety in learners as well as their final performances. Present study aimed at investigating the relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers‘ perfectionism and their students‘ language anxiety. To this end, twenty EFL teachers (male and female) and five learners of each teacher (i.e. 100 EFL learners) participated in this study. To collect the data, teachers filled in the multidimensional perfectionism scale and the learners were administered the foreign language classroom anxiety scale. Results from Pearson correlation and the following regression analyses revealed that there was a statistically significant negative relationship between EFL teachers‘ perfectionism (both self oriented and other oriented) and their learners‘ anxiety. A number of pedagogical implications are discussed based on the findings of the present.