A Study Of University EFL Learners’ Willingness To Communicate In Online And Face-to-face Cooperative Learning

In recent decades, there are substantial studies on both cooperative learning and willingness to communicate. However, the relation between the two and the factors in influence have seldom been explored. Based on the previous studies, the present study is mainly intended to investigate university EFL learners’willingness to communicate in online and face-to-face cooperative learning settings outside class, and two important factors influencing their willingness to communicate in L2, namely, self perceived communicative competence (SPCC) and personal reported communication anxiety (PRCA).The study took Zhejiang University of Media and Communication as an example. The subjects were 175 non-English major sophomores from 4 classes, with about 45 students in each class. They were taking the same English course and were on the same English level. Two classes of them did face-to-face cooperative learning as the controlled group, the other two classes did online cooperative learning as the experimental group. The research instruments used were:student questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data collected was analyzed by SPSS 16.0. The results showed that the students’ L2 willingness to communicate in online and face-to-face cooperative learning had some common futures, mainly including:(1) their L2 willingness to communicate in general was higher than that in cooperative learning; (2) they were more willing to use English if the tasks were simple rather than complex; (3) they had the lowest willingness to communicate in L2 when facing conflicts; and some differences, mainly including:(1) their general tendency of L2 willingness to communicate online was higher than that of face-to-face; (2) by simple tasks, students online had significantly higher L2 willingness to communicate than the face-to-face ones. The results also show that students’ L2 willingness to communicate in cooperative learning had (1) a significantly positive correlation with their L2 communicative competence, but (2) a significantly negative correlation with their L2 communication anxiety. Data from the interviews was analyzed to further exemplify and as supplement to the results of the quantitative data and the overall findings. Based on the findings, implications were drawn form theoretical, methodological and pedagogical perspectives, which are expected to enrich both the study on cooperative learning and L2 willingness to communicate.