An Investigation On International Students' Willingness To Communicate In Chinese

This study investigated the international students'willingness to communicate (WTC) in learning and speaking Chinese in Chongqing University, China. Following the trait/state dichotomy of WTC, this study explored the dual characteristics of the WTC construct: trait-like WTC and situational WTC. Specifically, the research objective included: (1) to investigate the general level of WTC, perceived competence (PC), communication anxiety (CA) of international students of different Chinese competence; (2) to examine the relationship between these three trait-like variables for international students with different Chinese competence; (3) to explore what variables and in what way those variables can predict the situational WTC of those international students.A mixed methodology of quantitative and qualitative methods was adopted in the present study. Three scales were employed to examine the trait-like WTC, including: the WTC scale, the SPCC scale, and the CA scale. Data from these three scales were analyzed through SPSS 17.0. Class observation and semi-structured interview were used to explore the situational WTC. Data from semi-structured interview were analyzed according to Freeman's interviewed-data analyzing model.The major findings showed that (1) Compared to the elementary students, the intermediate and the advanced students demonstrated higher PC and lower CA, and therefore they were much more willing to communicate in Chinese. Nevertheless, the intermediate students demonstrated higher PC and WTC, and lower CA than the advanced students. (2) The intermediate students demonstrated the highest degree of positive correlation between PC and WTC while the advanced students demonstrated the highest degree of negative correlation between CA and WTC, which indicated that PC was the best predictor of WTC for less competent L2 learners while CA was the best predictor for more competent L2 learners. However, WTC and PC were found not significantly correlated with each other for the elementary students. (3) The degree of negative correlation between PC and CA was highest for the advanced students, secondly high for the intermediate students and, and least high for elementary students, which indicated that with the development of learners'competence in a L2, language anxiety could exert much more influences on their perceived competence. (4) Topic, interlocutor, and conversational context were three situational variables which could predict students'situational WTC through interacting with three psychological antecedents, namely, security, excitement, and responsibility in both class and out-class contexts. (5) Perceived politeness in out-class contexts, support from teachers and classmates in class contexts, competitiveness in class contexts, could exert influence on students'situational WTC through security, excitement. Besides, teacher played a crucial role influencing students'situational WTC in both contexts. (6) State communicative confidence could predict students'situational WTC through security and responsibility; even sometimes it could exert direct influence on situational WTC. (7) Students'motivation sometimes could override the feeling of insecurity arising from some difficult classroom activities, and then activate situational WTC through responsibility.