International Journal of Educational Investigations Vol. 1, No. 1: 356-373, 2014, (December) Available online @ http://www.ijeionline.com Copyright © 2014 International Association of Academic Journals 356 Mishandling of Privacy in Language Classrooms: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners Sasan Farzi 1 *, Dr. Azizollah Dabaghi 2 , Dr. Ahmad Moinzadeh 3 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. M.A, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran 2. Ph.D., Department of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran 3. Ph.D., Department of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran *Corresponding Author: sasanfarzi@live.com __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract The emergence of the concept of communicative competence marked a shift in the view of language teaching and language learning from mastery of grammatical structures to the ability to communicate. Communicative Language Teaching has been widely embraced and practiced all over the world by many language institutes during last decades. It emphasizes classroom communication and conversation as a basic means of language teaching. Some factors inhibit classroom communication. Among these, affective factors play an important role in language learners‟ Willingness to Communicate (WTC). One of the areas which has not been studied under subcategories of WTC is privacy, mishandling of which can lead to some sort of communication breakdown in classroom environments. This study was an attempt to focus on the areas of privacy which may be problematic in classroom situations if tried to be discovered by any attempt of interrogation in front of the class. A survey study was done to identify the areas of privacy in which language learners prefer not to be interrogated. Six areas of privacy were specified and related questions were included in the questionnaire forms. 118 (64 females and 54 males) language learners aged 20-25 years participated in the study. An interview session was held a week after the participants filed out the questionnaire forms. The results of the study indicated that participants were more reluctant to answer private questions in the area of “love matters. The second problematic area of privacy for participants was “life experiences” and the third was “occupation”. Next came the areas of “family and relatives”, “personal information” and finally, “likes and dislikes”. Also, some implications are presented at the end of the study for language practitioners and a number of suggestions are provided. Keywords: affective variables, willingness to communicate (WTC), privacy _______________________________________________________________________