Effect Of Language Aptitude On The Willingness To Communicate In English Majors

Communication is the ultimate goal of foreign language learning,which is largely affected by the willingness to communicate(WTC).Many scholars think that the most primary goal of foreign language teaching in China is to train students' WTC.As a learner factor,WTC has been extensively studied by scholars in recent years.It has been pointed that it is essential to develop foreign language learners' WTC,but what we need to clarify first are the connotation of the WTC and the factors which influence the WTC(Wu Xudong,2008)..Wu(2008)concluded that there is a significant positive correlation between foreign language communicative competence and the willingness to communicate.With the increasing research on foreign language teaching,students' individual difference has become the focus.At the same time,learner factors have attracted great concern.Thus,it is assumed that foreign language aptitude may be strongly related to the WTC as well.As is shown in the following frame,the paper infers that foreign language aptitude is likely to affect WTC through communicative competence.According to relevant researches,the relation between LA and communicative competence remains unclear.It is still a puzzle whether communicative competence plays a mediating role in the relation between LA and WTC.Thus,the study aims to explore 3 questions:(1)Is there a correlation between communicative competence and PA?(2)Is there a correlation between communicative competence and WTC?(3)Does communicative competence work as a mediator between English communicative competence and WTC?Three tasks were carried out in the research,namely communicative competence,language aptitude and WTC to 80 freshmen and 80 junior students from a university in Fujian province.Data collected were processed and analyzed by SPSS 13.0 and Excel.Results show that:(1)communicative competence is significantly correlated with PA;(2)PA is highly correlated with WTC;(3)there is a mediation of communicative competence in the relation between PA and WTC.Taking the communicative competence into consideration,this study offered unique insights into the relationship between PA and WTC.In terms of theory,it provided a new way of thinking about the relationship between PA and WTC,and pinpointed the mediating role of communicative competence.In practice,foreign language teaching in China needs to pay much more attention to WTC as well as its training,in order to promote English learning.