Students' willingness to communicate in different classroom tasks

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Students' willingness to communicate in different
classroom tasks
Christopher Weaver
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Willingness to Communicate
Willingness to communicate (WTC) is
conceptualized as the probability of engaging in
communication (speaking and writing) when free to
do so. As such, WTC is thought to be a predictor
of L2 use
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The WTC Model
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Research Questions

• To what extent does students willingness to
  communicate vary across different speaking tasks
  done inside an oral communication class?
• To what extent does students level of
  willingness, anxiety and perceived ability to do
  the different speaking tasks differ before and
  after receiving English instruction?
• To what extent does pre-task planning and having
  access to written notes/text influence students
  willingness to do the different speaking tasks
  inside an oral communication class?

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Participants in the study
307 Japanese university students attending a
national university in Tokyo, Japan. 94 of the
students were female and remaining 213 students
were male. These non-English majors were taking
a compulsory English oral communication course.
The class met once a week for 90 minutes for a
total of 13 meetings. The goal of the oral
communication class is prepare students to travel
to an English-speaking country.
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Experiment Design

• The students completed a survey on the first and
  last classes. The survey asked students to
  indicate their level of
• willingness to do 12 different speaking tasks
  inside the class (pre-a.91 post-a.94)
• anxiety to do the 12 speaking tasks (pre-a.93
  post-a.96)
• ability to successfully do the 12 speaking tasks
  (pre-a.93 post-a.96)
• And
• The perceived usefulness of pre-task planning
  (pre-a.96 post-a.97) and having access to
  written notes while performing the tasks
  (pre-a.96 post-a.97).

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Tasks from a rhetorical perspective
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Willingness across the different speaking tasks
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(No Transcript)
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Students willingness to do different speaking
tasks
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Perceived usefulness of pre-task planning (WTCTP)
and having accessing to notes (WTCTN)
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Concluding Remarks
Students willingness varied across different
speaking tasks within an EFL oral communication
class. Pre-Post instruction gains found in terms
of WTC, anxiety, perceived ability as well as the
perceived usefulness of pre-task planning and
having access to notes. Perceived usefulness of
pre-task planning and having access to notes,
however, varies across different speaking tasks.