An Investigation Into English Majors’ Willingness To Communicate In And Out Of Classroom

Different from anxiety, motivation, attitudes which attracted many researchers’much attention in exploring these variables’ interrelations with language learningacquisition, willingness to communicate (WTC) emerged as an important affectivevariable being focused on until1990s. For the reason that current language learninglay more emphasis on practical usage rather than on exam-orientated education,whether students are willing to communicate with others inside and outside theclassroom plays an important role in second language acquisition. Although adequatestudies have been conducted abroad, researches at home still stays at an exploringphase, especially when it concerns English major students. In order to provideenlightenment for L2WTC studies on English majors at home, the author decided tomake an investigation into English major students’ L2WTC inside and outside theclassroom based upon theoretical and empirical findings put forward by other scholarsbefore.In specific, three questions were put forward in the study:1）the general pictureof English majors’ L2willingness to communicate inside and outside the classroom;2）whether the English majors’ L2willingness to communicate in four skills (speaking,reading, writing and listening comprehension) inside the classroom correlates withtheir WTC outside of the classroom or not;3）the correlations among five learningorientations and the English majors’ L2willingness to communicate inside andoutside of the classroom.The participants of the study were199undergraduate English majors in junioracademic year randomly selected from Jiangxi Normal University in2012AutumnSemester. The instruments of the study included questionnaire to199participants andsemi-structured interviews with21students from7natural classes who take part in thequestionnaire. The data collected were analyzed with the help of quantitative andqualitative analysis. In terms of quantitative analysis, statistical package for socialsciences (SPSS)13.0version was applied by descriptive statistics, correlation analysis,paired-samples T-test. Utterances acquired from semi-structured interviews wererecorded by recorder pen for qualitative analysis. The major findings could be summed up as follows:1) L2WTC sum scores ofEnglish majors in Jiangxi Normal University both inside and outside the classroomare higher than the middle level. Generally speaking, L2WTC in reading is thehighest one and L2WTC in writing is the lowest one both inside and outside theclassroom. Except for writing L2WTC, the other three skills’ L2WTC all surpassesthe middle level in and out of classroom;2) English majors’ L2WTC in four skillsinside the classroom have a high correlation with their L2WTC outside the classroomrespectively. The correlation of listening comprehension inside and outside theclassroom is the highest one and the correlation of speaking is the lowest one;3) thefive language learning orientations correlate with L2WTC in four skills inside andoutside the classroom closely, friendship and knowledge orientations share the closestcorrelations with L2WTC in four skills inside and outside the classroom;4) socialsupports from teachers, parents and relatives, students themselves are the mainsources which promote English majors’ language learning.The present research enriches the research findings of L2WTC and providesseveral pedagogical implications and limitations for further deeper researches in theChinese EFL context for English major students.