An Investigation On Willingness To Communicate In English Inside And Outside The Classroom In A Senior Middle School

Since modern language teaching lays a strong emphasis on authentic communication, willingness to communicate in a second language(L2 WTC) has become an important aspect in research on second language acquisition(SLA). It is acknowledged that the appropriate objective for L2 education is to create and stimulate students' willingness to participate in communicative activities. In fact, willingness to communicate is a direct factor which determines whether language learners will succeed in language learning or not. Nevertheless, Chinese language learners are widely considered as “reticent learners”. Therefore, helping Chinese students to arouse willingness to communicate in Chinese EFL setting has become the vital issue of L2 studies in China.This study aimed to investigate Chinese senior high school students' L2 WTC inside and outside the classroom. Participants in the present study were 98 senior high school students selected from two intact classes in a middle school. The instruments applied in this study consisted of a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. All of the participants were asked to fill the questionnaire and 8 of them were selected to have a semi-structured interview. Specifically, this study examined the major characteristics of students' WTC in English inside and outside the classroom and explored the differences in students' WTC in English between high proficiency students and low proficiency students. Besides, it also investigated the differences in students' WTC in English between male and female students. By using SPSS 17.0(Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), both descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were carried out for data analysis. Meanwhile, contents of semi-structured interview were recorded by MP3 for qualitative analysis.On the basis of the data analysis, the study has revealed some meaningful findings. First of all, the overall tendency of senior high school students' L2 WTC both inside and outside the classroom is not satisfactory. Secondly, with regard to the level of L2 WTC in four language skills, students have a higher willingness to practice listening and reading than that of speaking and writing. Thirdly, there is a significant difference of L2 WTC between male and female students, with female students having a higher willingness to communicate than male students. Finally, high proficient students tend to be more willing to communicate in English than low proficient students.Based on the above findings in this study, some implications for English teaching and learning are proposed to improve students' L2 WTC inside and outside the classroom. English teachers should firstly make every effort to create a comfortable, vivid and relaxed classroom atmosphere to arouse students' willingness to communicate in English. Besides, English teachers' roles should be shifted from the authority of the class to students' helpful friends and facilitators. When teachers design spoken assignments for students, they need to take various aspects into consideration such as gender, personality and English proficiency.