Dual-Modalities of Synchronous CMC into Class Instruction: An Investigation of Willingness to Communicate

Abstract

Ability to initial a conversation or be able to communicate in the second language is seen to be an optimum in second language acquisition. However, this ability seems to be lack most of practice in the second language learning, particularly to English as a foreign language (EFL) students. As a result, the less communicative practice they have achieved, the less willingness to communicate (WTC) in English would be developed accordingly. In order to activate the communication practice in English for the EFL students, a means of engaging synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in the language class instruction is concerned. To this end, the current study aims to examine and understand whether an engagement of dual-modalities SCMC in terms of text SCMC and audio SCMC would make an influence to the EFL students' WTC in English. Regarding the additional environment settings with the instruction, the relationship of students' WTC and confidence in English within each environment setting was examined. In the meantime, feedback gathered from the EFL students on what WTC behaviors would greatly affect their WTC in English was also investigated. Total of 32 first year college students were recruited for ten weeks for the experiment. A mixed method examination was applied to gather data from questionnaires as well as open-ended questions. The results identified positive correlations between students' WTC and confidence in English in both text and audio SCMC while no correlation was revealed in the ftf communication. Several WTC behaviors were rated greatly with feedback to affect their WTC in English correspondingly. Therefore, a summary was discussed to the dual-modalities of SCMC as well as the influence of WTC behaviors on WTC in English to EFL students.