A National Conference on Issues in English Literature and Language Teaching: New Trends and Criticisms May 2, 2012 English Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Lorestan University 1 The Role of Gender and Academic Experience in EFL Students' Willingness to Communicate in English in Academic Context Mehrshad Ahmadian Kamran Shirvani English Department, Qaemshahr Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qaemshahr, Iran Abstract The purposes of this study were to investigate the status of the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) of the Iranian students of English as a foreign language and the possible roles of gender and academic experience in the degree of the students' WTC. The data were collected by a questionnaire of WTC which was previously validated for the Iranians. The participants of the study were 163 university students majoring in English at different universities. The findings of the study revealed an average WTC among the students. Moreover, it was found that there is a significant difference between female and male students in terms of their WTC. This found to be contrary to the findings of previous researches, especially that of baker and McIntyre (2000). Based on the model of WTC, it was assumed that the contradiction may be due to critical cultural differences between the contexts of these two studies. However, the degree of WTC is not affected by the length of undergraduate education, that is, there is no significant difference between first-year students' and fourth-year students' WTC; that is, academic experience found to have no effect on students degree of WTC. Keywords: Willingness to Communicate (WTC), gender, academic experience, English as a foreign language (EFL) In the light of the increase of the use of English as an international language, non-native speakers' willingness to communicate (WTC) in English has gained importance. In line with this, McIntyre et al. (1998) put forward the first theoretical model of WTC for second language (L2) learners in foreign and second language contexts. According to this model, WTC in a given situation is "one's readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons using an L2" (McIntyre et al., 1998: 574). Based on their model, WTC is influenced by several factors such as learner's personality, the social context in which he lives, his attitude toward the native speakers, hic self-confidence and motivation. Besides these factors which can be classified as traits, there are other two factors which vary from one situation to the other: (1) learner's willingness to communicate with a specific person; and (2) the degree of his self confidence. According to McIntyre et al. (1998), a learner's WTC is the outcome of the interaction of these factors. Although several studies have touched the roles of various combinations of these factors in learner's WTC (Yashima et al., 2004; Clement et al., 2003; Hashimoto, 2002), the key point is that these studies have often been developed with regard to those learners who had been in ESL situation rather than an EFL academic context. Based on the available theoretical background the study at hand attempts to probe the role of influencing factors on EFL learner's WTC in an EFL academic context. Theoretical background As it was mentioned above, according to the model presented by McIntyre et al. (1998: 574), WTC is defined as a learner's "readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a