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Although the role of women in labor market has increased dramatically in recent years, the share of women from top organizational levels is still very low in comparison with their male colleague worldwide. One explanation for this situation and lowerfemale count in managerial positions is the existence of gender stereotypes about women, which is in conflict with the stereotypes of management and leadership. The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents of stereotypical attitudes toward females in management positions in Iran.Data gathering tool was semi-structured interview. The open coding method has been used to analyze content of the interviews and to identify concepts and categories. Statistical population of this study consisted of university experts with expertise in human resource management, organizational behavior management, sociology and womenstudies. Fourteen interviews were conducted using purposeful sampling and snowball technique. The results of the study identified 23 concepts and 11 categories as the antecedents of gender stereotypical attitudetowardsfemales in management.

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The present study, as a research in the field of language and gender, aimed at investigating the Persian spoken by women in Kermanshah city based on Lakoff’s dominance approach. Research in the field of language and gender began by Robin Lakoff (1973, 1975). She postulated that the language of women is different from men. According to her, women have a tendency to use the linguistic features that reflect and reinforce a subordinate role in society’s power structure. These linguistic features include "hedges", "indirect requests", "tag questions", "fillers", "and empty adjectives “and” up talk". She further suggested that women use "super polite forms" and have a "poorer sense of humor" than men. The purpose of this study was to investigate, describe and categorize the specific features in women’s speech. It further analyzed the impact of age on the frequency of using these speech features. The data of the present study were collected using questionnaires and interviews from 90 urban middle-class Persian-speaking women of Kermanshah in three different age groups with diploma or no academic degree. The authors of this study, in addition to examining the language of Kermanshahi women in line with Lakoff’s approach and explaining them based on "Freud's defense mechanism theory", succeeded to add several other features based on the science of psychology. These new and innovative speech features which were pointed out in the present study are: "childlike speech and tone", "stretched sounds", "histrionic language", "avoidant language", and "animism". The research findings were analyzed quantitatively using chi-square test, and qualitatively adopting the framework of Freud's defense mechanisms theory. The findings of the study demonstrate that age creates a significant difference in the frequency of using most of these speech features. Save for the two features of "rising tone in statements" and "tag questions", all the other features of Lakoff's approach and the features discovered by the researchers exist in women's speech, with different frequencies though, and can be generalizable to the population at large.
The table below presents both group of features of women’s language by Lakoff and the authors:
 
Features of the Persian language spoken women (Kermanshahi)

Features included in Lakoff's approach	Features Discovered by Researchers
Hedging	Childlike speech and tone
Color terms	Stretched sound
Empty adjectives	Avoidant language
Super polite forms	Histrionic of choice
Weak quantifiers	Animism
Expletives
Empathic stress

 
 

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Will women enjoy the same rights as men on the Day of Judgment or they will face gender discrimination within the framework of rightful justice? Is gender involved in the recompense or comeuppance granted to the people for their eternal living? Will men and women enjoy the same divine favors or men gain further owing to their dominating character? Are heavenly recompenses, material and spiritual pleasures awarded to both men and women equally or women will be next to men? This article is supposed to answer such questions and elucidate the status of women in the afterlife from an Islamic standpoint with involvement of gender on the Doomsday.

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Beck, W. (2005). Proverb speaks louder than words: folk wisdom in art, culture, folklore, history, literature and mass media. Peter Lang Publications.

Beck, W. (2005). Proverb speaks louder than words: folk wisdom in art, culture, folklore, history, literature and mass media. Peter Lang Publications.

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Aims: Experience in many wars and armed conflicts have shown that the security forces team should be monolithic to achieve the desired result. Gender dissonance is a factor that negatively affects the ability of the officer team to fulfill its assigned tasks. The purpose of the study lies in highlighting important gender issues in the education of cadets, namely female cadets of Ukrainian security forces universities, which were identified during their expert survey.
Instrument & Methods: This descriptive study was conducted in 2021 at the Central Research Institute of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This research was conducted in a survey among third- and fourth-year female cadets between 19 and 22. A total of 100 future officers participated.
Findings: The study identified the following problems in the gender education of female cadets: relatively high levels of material motivation when enrolling in a security forces university, insufficient level of psychological readiness for service in combat units, low aspirations for career advancement, and unsuitable living environment.
Conclusion: The gender policy pursued by the state through the relevant governing bodies significantly lags behind the realities that spontaneously materialize, especially within the officer teams. When the need for certain changes has already become formalized among officials in the security forces, the reality is at a different level of development. The authors consider it appropriate to carry out further comprehensive scientific research work, which should reflect the social, psychological, legal, economic, and cultural aspects of the gender equality problem.

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Gorani is one of the Northwestern Iranian languages spoken in Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces of Iran, as well as a part of Iraqi Kurdistan. This language is highly endangered due to the heavy influence of its neighboring commonly spoken languages such as Persian, Arabic, and Kurdish. Gorani has maintained some very interesting grammatical features of the Middle Iranian languages, including gender, to which scholars like Mackenzie (1966) and Sajjadi (2014) have briefly made references. With respect to the notably effective role of gender in Gorani morphology and syntax, this essay sets out to address its uses and different forms by the field data of Hawrāmī Lahun and Hawrāmān Takht dialects. Considering the Corbett’s framework of gender (1991), methods for identifying the gender of loanwords and compound words are suggested. The results indicate significant differences in the grammatical gender of borrowed words from other languages, in the use of masculine and feminine case markers, and in the use of personal endings. Moreover, the findings show how the gender of nouns can influence some modifiers, such as the nominal dependent, in the above mentioned dialects

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The significant role played by women struggling during the Pahlavi era-in shaping and accelerating the movements let to the 1979 revolution- has given them a special historical status. Awareness of this prominent position has undoubtedly been effective in getting some of them to record their life experiences in the form of autobiographies. By accepting autobiography as a way to represent self-identity and self-narration - which is based on gender – the research seeks to examine-using interpretive hermeneutic approach within the conceptual framework of Paul Ricoeur's narrative identity-on one hand the place of language and time at the level of narrative and, on the other hand, how to reflect feminine identity in narrative formats redefined in the aforesaid theory, relying on the memories of Pahlavi-era women in political arena. By recognizing the instability of identity, the study has assumed it a linguistic and temporal matter constructed by the narrators that has represented in the form of narrative, and we have made use of the most relevant theory to understand how this identity constructs. In other words, based on the conceptual framework of Paul Ricoeur's narrative identity to interpret the text of political women's memoirs, we seek to answer the following questions:
1. What place do language and time occupy at the narrative level?
2. How has feminine identity been redefined in narrative formats?
The presence of 9 women in the Left discourse and 3 women in a subgroup of Islamic ideology and the reflection of gender identity and concerns in the context of organizational identity, appropriately illustrates the dominance of the campaign discourse and organizational ideology over the female gender identity of these autobiographers, that should be considered as the data and obvious hypotheses of the study.
Of course, we are seeing that leftist militants are more explicit to represent their gender identity than Muslim militants. Narrative coherence, nonlinearity of the narrative, and the existence of a "synchronous" and "simultaneous" relationship between the time of life and the time of narration are other research results that should be noted. The continuity of story chains and the detailed description, including details of the characters involved in shaping the narrator's identity, are among other things related to the analysis of the aforementioned works. Also, the language used in the narrative is influenced by the time of the narration of the work, as in the narratives in the context of the event we see the use of slogan, emotional, and idealistic vocabulary, while in the narratives made with a temporal distance from the event, there is no place for these sentiments.
 

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Proverbs represent the ethnic culture of any society, and by reflecting on them, a deeper and clearer picture of that society can be achieved. In this regard, the aim of the present study was to compile and interpret a set of Balochi proverbs related to the values, beliefs and convictions of the Baloch people in the field of family and in particular gender relations. For this purpose, two methods of library and field studies have been used. We have also used an interpretive approach to analyze the research materials. The analysis of proverbs collected in this field, shows seven central categories: 1) Sovereignty and continuity of the patrilineal and patriarchal system; 2) Ethnocentric kinship and continuity of tribal structure; 3) Sanctifying and honoring the role of parents in the education and socialization of children; 4) Hospitality and the responsible social communication; 5) Respect to the elderly; 6) Emphasis on the importance of motherhood; 7) Looking at women in the shadow of men. Overall, the research findings show that among the Baloch people, due to the lack of widespread Balochi written language, popular literature and especially proverbs have a significant role in socialization, generational education, intergenerational transmission, identification, reproduction and strengthening of kinship and gender values; and in this sense, it is one of the cultural tools for preserving and perpetuating the identity and culture of the Baloch people.
 

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This research has been carried out based on an analytical-descriptive method focusing 4391 couplets common among the folklore of Fars province. This study also analyzes the frequencies of the elements including the one who curses, the one who is cursed and the cause of curse. Then, they are analyzed from the statistical point. Finally, the reflection of these elements and gender has been heeded in the field of the folklore culture. The findings of this research indicate that in the poems considered in this study, all the ones who curse are human and half of the beings who are cursed are non- human. This could be as a result of the connection between the curse reaction and human speech against human factors, obstacles, and the projection of guilt on non-humans. In the couplets, the lover has the most reflection (82%) out of the nineteen groups of the ones who curse and the ones who are loved have got 34% of the ones who are cursed. From the gender perspective, women are the ones who are cursed the most. The aim specification of the male oriented society is that men are arrogant and are weak against the obstacles, whereas women are patient and are loyal toward their romantic relationship. Nonetheless, it may reveal the denial of woman's right to complaint. It also confirms the one sidedness of romantic relationship in a male oriented society
 

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Believing that parables carry people's lived experiences and their beliefs and attitudes about various topics, including children and childhood, their study leads to a greater understanding of different communities' attitudes toward these subjects. Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the attitude towards children and childhood in the common parables of Bakhtiari culture, using content analysis method. Issues such as the status of children (the importance of having children, the number of children and gender preference), educational issues (the parent's resposiblity for raising the child, factors affecting the child's upbringing and gender stereotypes) and parent-child relationship (child's obedience, benevolence of parents and expectations), are among the topics explored in this research. The results of the analysis revealed that, in Bakhtiari culture, the attitude towards children and childhood is influenced by Iranian and Islamic teachings. Within the studied examples, most issues related to a child's upbringing, such as the role of hereditary and environmental factors on the formation of their personality, have been highlighted—including the idea that the child will resemble their mother or maternal uncles physically and behaviorally. Gender preference is a function of the number of children in the family in this culture, and in terms of stereotypes, girls have been described as more loyal and resourceful compared to boys. Additionally, children are expected to respect their parents, while parents are also reminded not to expect too much from their children.
 

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Legends and fairy tales are the first important events of socialization in children's lives; in fact, all of us have been affected by these imaginary stories. The reflection of this influence is evident in the foundations of the culture and public manners of every nation. The story of "Naranj and Toranj" is one of the old folk oral stories in Persian literature, which has been narrated in different ways in different regions. Examining and analyzing different narratives of the story of Naranj and Toranj from the perspective of language and gender is an issue that will be addressed in the present research, using the method of content analysis. The story describes the life of a childless king who makes a vow and has a son. The story describes the events that the prince leaves behind in order to reach Naranj and Toranj's daughter. This research examines and analyzes the vocabulary of different narrations of Narenj and Toranj story from the linguistic context in the selection of words and in the next step of semantic engineering from a gender perspective. This study was formed with the aim of knowing the extent of the use of semantic engineering to convey meaning in context. Therefore, the results indicated that the co-occurrence patterns, frequency and distribution of cases and even syntactic structures have a great influence on the words to the extent that the meaning of a word in the text cannot be recovered in the dictionary definitions.

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This article examines the reproduction of gender identity in Dowlatabadi’s short story “The Man” in the light of Judith Butler’s theory of Gender Performativity. It investigates the cultural function of identity and the way language discursively reflects the role of the unestablished identity in the story. It also presents new outlooks towards language performativity of the male/female dichotomy. What this article focuses on is an individual's identity, and language, exploring the concept of gender performativity.
Butler asserts that performativity is a ritualized production and a constrained reiteration of cultural intelligibility under the compulsory prohibition pressed by the power regimes. The culturally-acquired gender is crafted based on the socially recognizable standards, which form the directionality of the self-representation. A Gender is an act that requires a repeated performance in ritual and social dramas. She declares that one is not born but rather becomes a subject whose gender is a discursive construction that defines his/her body. Moreover, the gendered subjects were subordinated to the language that interpellated them, so that each individual became a linguistically stylized occasion.
Dowlatabadi’s main character in this story undergoes transfiguration from childhood to adulthood affected by the social upheavals leading him towards his crafted and gendered identity formation. His father’s roles are resignified through the reiteration and imitation of the gendered and naturalized regulations. Surveying “The Man” elucidates that gender identity is an imitation, which leads the character to resignify and recontextualize the parodic gender reproductions. Therefore, the established discourses gave the agent the feasibility to establish his intelligible social existence.
Springing from the discussion about gender performativity of Dowlatabadi’s character, the article concluded that identity is a phantasmatic construction. What an individual performes is a non-intrinsic parody of the culturally constructed regulations. It can be concluded that identity is established by the power of language that interpellates the subjects.
 
 

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Advertisement is a thinkable subject to various fields of study such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics and criticism. In the visual advertising texts, at least two systems work together, the language system and visual one, to form the layers of text. The purpose of this research is to increase the knowledge of people and change their attitudes to communications and advertisements and finally to change the style of social life of them through the change in the content of text and image in the advertisement of billboards in Tehran. In addition, this research attempts to present the linguistic and non-linguistic factors in the advertisement and to use the theoretical achievements of discourse and pragmatic factors for making advertisement that is more useful for commercial institutes. It is worth mentioning here that the authors fulfill this research by collecting data through field research, interviews and questionnaires, and the authors used descriptive-analytic method to analyze the results. In addition, a body of two hundred participants, including one hundred for each sex, who responded to qualitative questionnaire, implemented this research. Moreover, the authors attempt to indicate that billboards in Tehran aim to affect and change the addresses' attitude in the direction of persuasion of them to buy the commercial products. This goal is achieved by using linguistic factors such as: text, the structure of text in terms of different types of its' chosen sentences, pragmatic factors like language roles and presuppositions, semiotic factors like linguistic signs, advertising signs and linguistic conventions.

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We live in a world of language and we communicate with each other using language (Fromkin et al., 2007). Deafness occurs when a person cannot understand speech through hearing, even when the sound is amplified. The degree of hearing loss is measured according to the sensitivity of deaf people’s ears to the sounds (Ganji, 2017) and then those people are asked to use hearing aids or do cochlear implantation surgery (Ebrahimi, 2006). Children have the opportunity to hear others’ speech during normal speech development while children with hearing impairment lose much of the auditory input, which may hinder speech development (Tseng et al., 2011 as cited in Serry and Blamey, 1999; Blamey et al., 2001; Peng et al., 2004; Bouchard et al., 2007). Different factors will affect speech development. One of these factors is DISABILITY, any disorder in hearing will affect speech and subsequently will cause problems in communication (Amiri et al., 2014). Some speech characteristics of children with hearing loss are different from each other and different from normally hearing children (Kord et al., 2012). GENDER is another factor affecting speech. While analyzing vowels produced by Azari speakers, Mirahadi et al. (2018) proved that men produce some vowels different from women.
Vowel space is a vowel quadrilateral which is used to shows the first and the second formants. Phoneticians put vowels in the vowel space according to their position in the oral cavity, which was first introduced by Essner (1947) and Joos (1948) (as cited in Harrington & Cassidy, 1999). The first formant will increase as we go down the vowel space, it shows highness of tongue while producing vowels in the oral cavity. The second formant shows anterior or posterior position of tongue in the process of production of vowels in the oral cavity and will increase as we go to the left side of the vowel space (Hayward, 2013: 227, 228 & 502).
The present study aims to compare the vowel space of hearing aided, cochlear implanted, and normally hearing children, with DISABILITY and GENDER as factors, in order to investigate the difference between the vowels produced by these children (Their average age was 10 years and 4 months and their participation in the study was optional, after getting permission from their parents.) and find out more effective hearing aid tools among two groups of children with DISABILITY (They did not have any mental or physical problems except hearing impairment and took part in language therapy classes for about 450 hours.), the group which makes vowels similar to normally hearing children will prove the effectivity of the hearing aid tools. So, the results will be useful for language therapists while helping children learn how to pronounce vowels.
Therefore, the participants, 5 girls and 5 boys in each group, were asked to repeat thirty-six CVC framed words. Each word consists of one of the stops [p, b, t, d, k, g] in the onset and offset of the pattern and one of the Persian vowels [æ, e, o, a, i, u] in the center. Then the words were recorded using a Shure microphone in PRAAT software. After that, the first and the second formants of each vowel were measured and by using SPSS software the data was analyzed.
The results showed that the effect of DISABILITY on the first formant of vowels [æ, a, i, u] and the second formant of vowels [a, e, o, u] was significantly different (p < 0.050). The results of a Post Hoc Bonferroni test showed that children with DISABILITY produced vowels [u, i, e, ᴂ] in a lower place in the vowel space comparing to normally hearings. Cochlear implanted children produced vowel [a] in a lower place and vowel [o] in a higher place in the vowel space comparing to normally hearings. Hearing aided children produced vowel [a] in a higher place in the vowel space comparing to normally hearings. All vowels in cochlear implanted children and vowels [ᴂ, a, e, i, u] in hearing aided children were produced in an anterior place in the vowel space comparing to normally hearings.
The results also proved that the effect of GENDER on the first formant of vowel [a] and the second formant of vowel [i] was significantly different (p < 0.050). The results of a Post Hoc Bonferroni test revealed that the mean of the first formant of vowel [a] in girls was more than boys and the mean of the second formant of vowel [i] in girls was less than boys.
It is also important to mention that hearing aided children had the smallest vowel space among three groups of participants while the vowel space of cochlear implanted children was not so different from the vowel space of normally hearings. So, language therapists have to try more to teach vowels to the children who use hearing aids comparing to the children who are cochlear implanted.

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In this article, which is a descriptive – analytical research, and the first research done about Nænæji dialect, the use of kinship terms and terms of address in this dialect is studied. This dialect is spoken in village of Nænæj, in Malayer County, Iran. Nænæji can be considered as a variety of Persian being influenced by Lori, Laki, and Kurdish languages.
In “introduction”, some basic points about the research and its goals are presented; then the village of Nænæj is briefly introduced; and finally the main questions of the research are presented as:

1. Concerning age degree of the informants, what kinds of changes can be seen in use of kinship terms and terms of address in Nænæji dialect, in recent decades?
2.  What are the causes of change in kinship terms and terms of address of Nænæji dialect?

The data, gathered in a field work and through network participation in the language community, are analyzed in four separate categories: kinship terms coming from consanguinity, kinship terms coming from affinity, kinship terms coming from RAḌᾹ and brotherhood formula (based on Islamic jurisprudence or Fiqh), and address terms for nonrelatives. Data have been analyzed through using concepts and terms of George Peter Murdock and Lewis Henry Morgan. In other words, partly, this research is based on what Murdock and Morgan have said about kinship terms in different languages of the worlds.
In “review of the literature”, a number of researches done about the use of kinship terms in different Iranian languages, namely Persian, Kurdish and Gilaki, are reviewed, to show that the present research can complete the researches done in this field.
This research reveals, among the rest, that Nænæji has a rich array of kinship terms and terms of address. Also, analysis of Nænæji kinship terms coming from consanguinity, Nænæji kinship terms coming from affinity, Nænæji kinship terms coming from RAḌᾹ, and Nænæji address terms for nonrelatives, shows that in using all of them we see deep changes in recent decades; in a way that decrease in variety of kinship terms and address terms of the dialect is something clear. In fact, in recent decades, Nænæji kinship terms have moved towards missing distinctions based on age, disappearance of derivative and descriptive terms, and accepting standard Persian’s norms and terms.
The research also reveals that today in Nænæji, the use of some of the kinship terms and terms of address is restricted to middle and old age groups.  It also indicates that change in community relationships and family structure, migration and urbanization are the causes of Nænæji kinship terms and terms of address become obsolete and even extinct; and the standard Persian equivalent substitute them. This is a clear example of dialect levelling in Iran.

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The Covid-19 pandemic has been with us, for almost a year now. It has affected our lives in multiple ways and challenged our achievements as well. Daily life has changed in aspects we never would have imagined. We had to change our habits and behaviors quickly in order to assure the health of our family, our neighbors and the rest of the world. While facing this “unprecedented” situation, there are terms that appear to describe the health crisis and its consequences. This planetary pandemic has also changed human behavior.
In this article, we will see how the word Covid-19, a real agent of change in our existence, initiated changes in language and our behavior. Indeed, within the generative process of meaning as envisioned by semiotics, Covid-19 is an actant that crosses the different stages of process, from denomination to discourse. The discursive effervescence of Covid-19 is narrative. It appears as the prototype of the anti-subject. Perfect and absolute embodiment of evil. A single narrative program motivates it: propagation. We also see also that Covid-19 is no longer just the anti-subject of this story. It truly becomes the Anti-Sender, leading in the shadows an army of villains, capable of reinventing themselves at one’s leisure. This is a spectacular example of actantial cumulation.

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Linguistic variation is one of the challengeable themes in sociolinguistics. The researcher discusses linguistic variation in Persian translations The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Translated into Persian by Sadegh Hedayat and Farzaneh Taheri. The main questions in the present research are: 1) How is the role of gender in producing lexical variation in these two translations of The Metamorphosis? 2) In which parts of speech does it take place lexical variation more than others? 3) How is the role of gender in producing syntactic variation in two translation of The Metamorphosis? 4) Are there any relationships between gender and syntactic processes concerning the syntactic variations? The results of research indicate that gender has crucial role in producing linguistic variation including lexical, morphological and syntactic variations in Persian language. The results indicate that there are 505 lexical variations in two translations in which the number of verbal, nominal, adjective, and adverbial variations is 398, 51, 39, 17, respectively. The investigation of data indicates that the rate of morphological variation is less than lexical and syntactic variations. Also, the results indicate that there are relationships between gender and syntactic variables such as scrambling, adjuncts application, question particle application, grammatical metaphor of nominalization, grammatical metaphor of modality, causation, relativization, extraposition, grammatical metaphor of transitivity, and subordination shifting. One of the main implications of present research is that there is close interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar and therefore, the results of present research confirm the opinions of sociolinguists such as Sells et al. (1996) and Barbiers(2002) about interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar

1. Introduction
Linguistic variation is one of the challengeable themes in sociolinguistics. In the contemporary literature of sociolinguistics, one of important paradigm resulting amalgam of sociolinguistic paradigm and generative paradigm emerged. The supporters of this paradigm believe that only integrative theory of syntactic variation including generative and sociolinguistic paradigm can explain the syntactic variations. Variation theory needs formal theory for description and explanation of grammatical characterization of syntactic variations and determination of location of variation in speakers’ grammars. Generative theory and sociolinguistics are complementary in the integrative theory of syntactic variations. The task of sociolinguistics is to explain patterns of variation based on social variables such as gender, social class, age, education in the speech community and the task of generative theory is to discover the constraints of syntactic variations. The present research is one of the newest one in discussing about syntactic variations based on integrated theory in Persian texts. The researcher discusses linguistic variation in Persian translations of the book entitled as The Metamorphosis compiled by Franz Kafka that is translated by Sadegh Hedayat and Farzaneh Taheri. The main questions in the present research are: 1) How is the role of gender in producing lexical variation in these two translations of The Metamorphosis? 2) In which parts of speech does it take place lexical variation more than others? 3) How is the role of gender in producing syntactic variation in two translation of The Metamorphosis? 4) Are there any relationships between gender and syntactic processes concerning the syntactic variations? The results of research indicate that gender has vital role in producing linguistic variation including lexical, morphological and syntactic variations in Persian language. The results indicate that there are 505 lexical variations in two translations in which the number of verbal, nominal, adjective, and adverbial variations is 398, 51, 39, 17, respectively. The investigation of data indicates that the rate of morphological variation is less than lexical and syntactic variations. Also, the results indicate that there are relationships between gender and syntactic variables such as scrambling, adjuncts application, question particle application, grammatical metaphor of nominalization, grammatical metaphor of modality, causation, relativization, extraposition, grammatical metaphor of transitivity, and subordination shifting. One of the main implications of present research is that there is close interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar and therefore, the results of present research confirm the opinions of sociolinguists such as Sells et al. (1996) and Barbiers (2002) about interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar

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Despite the bulk of literature on various aspects of anxiety, its multi-dimensional aspect generates many controversies among researchers. Sometimes, EFL learners may suffer from proficiency and gender dependent anxiety in language learning contexts. This correlational study aims to explore the relationship between the construct of general anxiety across different English proficiency levels including elementary, intermediate, and advanced in Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 108 male and female (54 in each group) Iranian EFL learners aged 14 to 18 took part in the present study at a private language school in Gorgan, Iran. The analyses explored the general relationship between anxiety levels and English proficiency levels and also EFL learners’ gender. Chi Square tests were run in R software did not demonstrate a significant relationship between anxiety and levels of proficiency in general. Findings revealed a significant relationship between EFL learners’ level of anxiety and gender. The results might help design future studies and assist teachers, teacher educators, and syllabus designers to devise their courses and tests considering affective factors which ultimately lead to students’ self-efficacy

1. Introduction
Language learning is a complicated process in which many factors are involved. Apart from cognitive factors, psychological factors play an inevitable role in the learning environment (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993). Affective factors such as empathy, self-esteem, and anxiety are rooted in psychology and encompass emotional side of human behavior and over the last 30 years many studies confirmed their undeniable role in language teaching (Brown, 2014). Cognitive and affective factors, once considered to be the opposite ends of a continuum are now seen as complementary to each other (Dewaele, 2005). Anxiety is among the affective factors which have attracted the most attention since foreign language teachers have always encountered learners who demonstrate different degrees of uneasiness and worry in the classroom. Horwitz’s study (1986) is considered to be the starting point for many other studies on the issue of “Foreign Language Anxiety” (FLA).
There are different perspectives with regard to FLA in the classroom; some believe that anxiety is a major problem and has detrimental effects on language learning (debilitative anxiety) (Gregersen, 2003; Gregersen & Horwitz, 2002); however, other scholars have the opposite idea and consider a small dose of anxiety as a facilitative factor in foreign language learning (Frantzen & Magnan, 2005).
Almost all studies in the field proved the negative influence of anxiety on foreign language learning (Horwitz, 1986). Several studies have focused on the level of anxiety among the learners whereas others have investigated the relationship between FLA and students’ oral performance or listening performance. Other researchers on the other hand have inspected its influence on students’ test performance. However, since the construct is a multi-faceted one, more studies need to be conducted to cover all its aspects. Most of the studies regarding the issue so far have been implemented in academic contexts among university students with different majors and mostly focused on the influence of FLA on test performance (Birjandi & Alemi, 2010; Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert, 1999). The exclusive EFL context of Iran in which students do not have the opportunity to be exposed to a great deal of English makes the situation even more challenging for the students to master a foreign language which adds to the importance of this research..
 
2. Literature Review
In Horwitz’s (1986) study significant negative correlation was found between FLA and English achievement of students who were learning Spanish or French. Chapell, Blanding, and Silverstein (2005) carried out a study among undergraduate and graduate students outcomes of which revealed a significant difference of academic achievement among students showing various degrees of anxiety. In the Thai context, the results of an investigation in an English language program revealed significant correlation between FLA and performance in English language as well (Anyadubalu, 2010).
Wigfield and Kennedy (2007) reported students who have high anxiety do poorly in tests. A study by Batumlu and Erden (2007) showed a significant negative correlation between FLA and English achievement test among university students. Rahimi (1999) found 36.9 % of high school students in Sanandaj, Iran had severe anxiety; Mozaffari’s (2001) findings were also in line with the previous research. Salehi and Marefat (2014) explored possible relationship between FLA and test anxiety and also the effects of FLA and test anxiety on foreign language test performance; the results displayed negative effects of both types of anxiety on test performance, and there was also a strong positive relationship between FLA and test anxiety. Daskzan (2004) documented that 37% of male and 53% of female high school students in Saghez, Iran had test anxiety and that there was a significant relationship between test anxiety and academic achievement. Mersi (2012) investigated FLA among male and females EFL learners and found out that females had higher level of anxiety. Rezazadeh and Tavakoli (2009) carried out a study on the relationship between gender, academic achievement, years of study and levels of test anxiety among university students, and it was revealed that females had a higher level of test anxiety. Two qualitative studies concluded that students in upper-level courses experience higher anxiety (Ewald, 2007; Kitano, 2001). However, Gardner, Smythe, & Brunet (1977) concluded that anxiety decreased when experience and proficiency increased.
Despite the number of studies (Ewald, 2007;Sparks & Ganschow, 2007;Daskzan, 2004), there are still no conclusive results on the issue and research on the differences in anxiety levels among proficiency levels among male and females EFL learners at private language institutes is rather scarce. To narrow the gap, this correlational study explored the relationship between the construct of general anxiety across different English proficiency levels including elementary, intermediate, and advanced in Iranian EFL learners. Based on the purpose of the research, the following research questions were formulated:
1. Are there any significant relationship among anxiety levels of EFL learners and their proficiency?
2. Is there any significant relationship among anxiety levels of EFL learners and their gender?
3. Are there any significant relationship among anxiety levels of female EFL learners and their proficiency?
4. Are there any significant relationship among anxiety levels of male EFL learners and their proficiency?
Method
The participants comprised 108 male and female (54 in each group) EFL learners whose age ranged 13-18 studying at three different proficiency levels at a private language institute in Gorgan, Iran. Cognitive Test Anxiety and Academic Performance based on 4-point Likert scale by Jerrell C. Cassady Ball State University and Ronald E. Johnson (2002) was used. A number of 108 out of the original 172 questionnaires were selected in the current study based on the learners’ age.
 
 
Data Analysis, Results, and Implications
The analyses explored the general relationship between anxiety levels and English proficiency levels and also EFL learners’ gender. Chi Square tests were run in R software did not demonstrate a significant relationship between anxiety and levels of proficiency in general. Findings revealed a significant relationship between EFL learners’ level of anxiety and gender. The results might help design future studies and assist teachers, teacher educators, and syllabus designers to devise their courses and tests considering affective factors which ultimately lead to students’ self-efficacy.