Effects of Extramural English Activities on Willingness to Communicate: The Role of Teacher Support for Chinese EFL Students

Abstract

Extramural English (EE) with teacher support may works more effectively for Asian EFL learners’ willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) given their sociocultural and educational contexts. Therefore, a teacher-supported EE program was developed to help students transit from teacher-controlled to learner-driven EE. Ninety Chinese EFL university students were randomly assigned to three groups: EE (n = 30), teacher-supported EE (n = 30), and conventional class (n = 30). Pre-post (trait-like WTC) and real-time survey (state-like WTC) results showed that the teacher-supportedEE group outperformed the other groups in improving their L2 WTC. Interviews (n = 20) revealed five factors influencing the L2 WTC improvement: emotional support from peers and teachers, teachers’ cognitive and pedagogical support, a low affective filter, increased topical knowledge, and increased English lexical knowledge. This is the first study that shows (a) EE activities improves trait-like and state-like L2 WTC levels in EFL learners and (b) EE works better with Asian EFL learners with teacher support.