Investigating Tertiary Level EFL Learners’ Willingness to Communicate in English

Tutku Basoz,Ismail Hakki Erten

doi:10.5539/elt.v11n3p78

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate Turkish EFL learners’ perceived levels of willingness to communicate (WTC) in English inside and outside the classroom. The study also aimed to explore whether there is a statistically significant difference between their in-class WTC in English and out-of-class WTC in English. The study, which employed a quantitative research design, was conducted with the participation of 701 EFL learners enrolled in the departments of Tourism Guidance and Tourism Management at Balıkesir University Faculty of Tourism located in Balıkesir, Turkey. The data collection instrument included a scale which measures the participants’ perceived levels of WTC in English. The data were analyzed descriptively through IBM SPSS 21. The findings of the study indicated that EFL learners have a moderate level of WTC in English. The findings also showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the participants’ perceived levels of their in-class WTC in English and their out-of-class WTC in English. It was found that they are more willing to communicate in English outside the classroom than they are inside the classroom. In the light of the findings, some practical recommendations were also noted.

Highlights

Recent second language (L2) pedagogy has attached great importance to the use of L2 both inside and outside the classroom with the intention of developing language learners’ communicative competence
As the use of L2 has been widely acknowledged as an indicator of and an important prerequisite to successful L2 learning (Ellis, 2008; Seliger, 1977; Swain, 1985), willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC), as a recent addition to individual difference (ID) variables, is regarded to be a construct of obvious relevance to L2 learning and as “the most immediate determinant of L2 use” (Clément, Baker, & MacIntyre, 2003, p. 191)
The mean scores which were between 1.00-2.33 were categorized as low WTC, those which fell between 2.34-3.67 were accepted as moderate WTC and those between 3.68-5.00 were assumed to be high WTC

Summary

Introduction

Recent second language (L2) pedagogy has attached great importance to the use of L2 both inside and outside the classroom with the intention of developing language learners’ communicative competence. There has been an intensive focus on communicative approaches to language teaching, which place greater emphasis on the engagement of language learners in communication (Savignon, 2005). This emphasis upon the active use of target language in L2 classrooms posits the idea that “learners have to talk in order to learn” A greater L2 WTC will result in better L2 development and more effective communication in various communication settings (MacIntyre, Dörnyei, Clément, & Noels, 1998). It is a complex ID variable that integrates a number of learner variables which have been widely accepted to exert influence on second language acquisition (Dörnyei, 2005)

Objectives

Results

Conclusion