A Study On Chinese Middle School Students’ Willingness To Communicate In Foreign Language Class From The Perspective Of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions is a framework to measure cultural differences between divergent cultural groups in inter-cultural communication.According to Hofstede,culture like the unwritten rules,is a demonstration of thoughts,feelings and behavior patterns of members of a society.Consisting of various interrelated cultural orientations,the concept of culture is complex focusing on beliefs,values,norms,and etc.It embodies a certain thinking pattern that contributes to the way how members of a certain social group perceive the world,and the manner in which they conduct in that world.As a result,it enables the application of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to analyze a variety of behaviors concerning culture.With the development of globalization,second language(L2)communication in foreign language(FL)classroom has become a new focus for researchers.Speaking in the FL is cited as the most anxiety-provoking activity in class,and subsequently the non oral participation of students in class has been a common phenomenon.Furthermore,what is noteworthy is that L2 studies have yielded consistent results that unwillingness to participate orally is particularly acute among Asian language learners,who are generally regarded to be more reserved than their European counterparts(Mak,2011).Since it is important to orally participate in an FL class,and it also seems that learners’ communication willingness has concerned with students cultural background as well as the anxiety they experience in FL classes,efforts should be undertaken to investigate the deep cultural factors behind the reasons for students low willingness to communicate(WTC)in order to predict and promote learners’ communicative behavior in a FL class.Taking 47 Chinese public middle school students as subjects,this thesis firstly adopts quantitative methods to further examine Hofstede’s assertion on cultural dimensions,trying to investigate possible cultural reasons for students’ low communication willingness in FL classroom through Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(FLCAS)and the Willingness to Communicate and Preferences for Teaching Strategies Scale(WTC).The findings obtained by quantitative research shows that the high uncertainty avoidance,the tendency of masculinity,the collectivism,and the large power distance between teachers and students all contribute to Chinese middle school students’ classroom anxiety,which further inhibits their WTC in English.Furthermore,the paper also adopts qualitative methods so as to recommend effective teaching strategies as reported by the subjects that they expect their teacher to use for encouraging more oral participation.The data that the interview has obtained are generally consistent with Hofstede’s theory.It is concluded that establishing a good teacher-student rapport to narrow the power distance,providing students with sufficient preparation time to reduce their uncertainty,designing more group-discussion class activities,as well as meriting students’ risk-taking with incentives are highly recognized in reducing foreign language classroom anxiety and promoting classroom oral participation.For a long time,Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions has been applied to the macroperspective,which has been neglected to investigate some more specific cultural phenomena from a micro-perspective.This paper attempts to explore the influence of Cultural Dimensions theory on the communication willingness of middle school students in FL class for proposing possible pedagogical implications for Chinese English teachers to decrease middle school students’ anxiety and encourage their communication willingness in class.Therefore,this thesis is conducive to enriching Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions in the FL classroom for its educational practical significance.