A Research Of Non-English-Majors’ Influential Factors Of Willingness To Communicate In English

L2 willingness to communicate(L2WTC)and its influential factors have always been the research focus in L2 acquisition and L2 teaching.Wen(2003:19)points out that the fundamental problem of Chinese L2 research is how to stimulate students’ L2 willingness to communicate,and to further improve the effectiveness of English teaching.However,based on the literature review of L2WTC,it can be found that most empirical studies on L2 willingness to communicate are mainly conducted in Canada,Japan and so on.Hence,it is very imperative to explore Chinese learners’ L2WTC from the empirical studies.This thesis is to investigate the influential factors of learners’ L2WTC aiming to reveal the complex influence relationship among L2 anxiety,international posture,L2 motivational self system(L2MSS)and L2WTC in Chinese context.Besides,the pyramid model of L2WTC proposed by MacIntyre and his associates(1998)and relevant empirical studies lie a solid theoretical foundation for this thesis.Based on the previous studies on L2WTC,the hypothesis model of L2WTC is proposed integrating L2WTC,L2 anxiety,international posture as well as L2MSS using SEM to examine it.Research questions are as follows:(1)What is the overall situation of Non-English majors’ L2WTC?(2)What are the effects of individual differences including gender,English proficiency and the time length of English study on L2WTC?(3)What is the relationship among L2 anxiety,international posture,L2MSS and L2WTC?This thesis mainly adopts quantitative method,supplemented by qualitative method to answer research questions.A total number of 456 non-English majors from a university in Hu Nan participate in the questionnaire survey.After screening,there are 420 valid questionnaires.Five of them take part in the interview in two months later.SPSS22.0 and AMOS 17.0 are used to process and analyze the data collected from the questionnaires.After testing,it verifies the data fitting the hypothesis L2WTC model well,which suggests the validity of the L2WTC model.The data gathered from interview is transcribed into script and analyzed by content analysis.Research results with combination of quantitative and qualitative,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Non-English majors’ L2WTC is not high between slightly disagree and slightly agree;(2)Gender and English proficiency have significant difference in learners’ L2WTC but the time length of English study shows no significant difference in learners’ L2WTC;(3)L2 anxiety can exert a negative influence on learners’L2WTC;International posture presents a positive influence on learners’ L2WTC;L2MSS has a positive influence on learners’ L2WTC and it also can affect learners’ L2WTC via L2 anxiety.These findings can help teachers to better understand students’ communicative behavior in classroom and thus further improve teaching effectiveness.