Abstract
This study investigates the impact of social support and foreign language anxiety (FLA) on learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English (L2) inside the classroom in an EFL context of Pakistan. The study administered adapted questionnaires on willingness to communicate (WTC), social support and foreign language anxiety (FLA) to 200 undergraduates of University of Balochistan, Quetta, Pakistan. To analyse the data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were performed in the SPSS. The findings on the social support revealed that father’s support, teachers’ support, best friends’ support, and other friends’ support exerted impact on learners’ L2 WTC. Additionally, anxiety also negatively and significantly predicted L2 WTC with a medium effect size (f2 = .26). These findings signify that provision of social support and means to minimize L2 anxiety can help L2 learners enhance their volitional readiness for L2 communication. The findings of this study have implications for EFL classroom participation in the target language and offer an insight for the policy and planning for the use of English language in an EFL context.
Highlights
The main purpose of learning a foreign language is to communicate effectively
This study investigates the impact of social support and foreign language anxiety (FLA) on learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English (L2) inside the classroom in an EFL context of Pakistan
The study administered adapted questionnaires on willingness to communicate (WTC), social support and foreign language anxiety (FLA) to 200 undergraduates of University of Balochistan, Quetta, Pakistan
Summary
Willingness to communicate (WTC) has emerged as one of the most dominant topics in the study of second language (L2) learning. Researchers claim that effective communication in L2 was the main objective of language learners (de Saint Léger & Storch, 2009; MacIntyre, Burns, & Jessome, 2011). One of the ultimate objectives of second language education is to create WTC among L2 learners in order to communicate proficiently (MacIntyre, Dörnyei, Clément, & Noels, 1998). Research studies in different countries including China (Liu & Jackson, 2009), Japan (Andrade & Williams, 2009; Watanabe, 2013), Iran (Riasati, 2012) and Pakistan (Khan, 2013; Shamim, 1996, 2008) support this argument about the unwillingness of Asian students to communicate in English
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