An Investigation Of Non-english Majors' Intercultural Willingness To Communicate

This thesis presents an empirical study of intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC) among a group of university students in China and factors influencing their IWTC and communication predispositions in intercultural activities. This study was guided by the following four research questions: 1. The extent to which the participants are willing or unwilling to communicate in intercultural encounters; 2. The relationships between IWTC and intercultural communication apprehension (ICA), international posture (IP), and self-perceived L2 proficiency (SPLP); 3. The prediction on IWTC given by ICA, IP, and SPLP; 4. The main factors that influence the participants'IWTC in intercultural communication contexts.This study investigated 183 non-English major university students from Guangdong, China using a mixed methods approach. Questionnaire survey was first employed to collect quantitative data which were analyzed by SPSS 13.0 through descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis. Qualitative data were then collected through semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions, and analyzed by content coding, themes generating, and categorizing.The main findings are: 1. In intercultural context, the participants displayed moderately low IWTC level. 2. IWTC was significantly correlated with the other three variables. Among the relationships, ICA was negatively correlated with IWTC, while IP and SPLP showed positive relationship with IWTC. 3. ICA, IP, and SPLP significantly predicted IWTC. 4. The main factors identified to influence the participants'IWTC were: communication situations, cognitive factors, foreigners'factors, communication motivation, and interpersonal relationship factors.This study has contributed theoretically, practically, and methodologically to the fields of intercultural communication research. Theoretically, it explored intercultural communication through examining individuals'communication predispositions, which have been receiving increasing interest of western scholars but few Chinese researchers. This study has contributed to the understanding of university students'communication traits in the Chinese EFL context. Methodologically, this mixed-methods approach, which has been seldom used in intercultural communication research, can enhance the validity and reliability of the research results. Practically, the results have offered pedagogical implications for teachers to understand factors influencing students'IWTC and therefore adopt effective teaching methods to improve students'IWTC and intercultural communication competence.