The Correlation Between English Classroom Environment And Classroom Oral Willingness To Communicate In High School

Learners’ willingness to communicate is important to improve their oral skills.There are many factors affecting the willingness to communicate,among which classroom situational factors and emotional factors have received extensive attention.However,research on academic emotions is in its stage of development in the field of English teaching in China,and research on the mediating effects of multiple emotions still needs to be further explored.Therefore,this study aims to explore the relationship among English classroom environment,foreign language-related emotions(boredom and pride)and classroom oral willingness to communicate,to provide a reference for English teaching in high schools.This study investigated 345 students in the first year of high school in Quanzhou by questionnaire and semi-structured interview to explore the following questions:(1)How do high school students perceive the English classroom environment? What is the overall situation of learners’ foreign language-related emotions and classroom oral willingness to communicate?(2)Is there any correlation between English classroom environment,foreign language-related emotions,and willingness to communicate in classroom oral English? If so,what kind of correlation does it show?(3)Can classroom environment affect oral willingness to communicate in English classroom through the mediating effect of foreign language learning boredom and pride?The findings show that(1)the perception of English classroom environment is at a relatively high level;the learners’ foreign language-related emotions are at a moderate level;learners’ the overall willingness to communicate in classroom oral English is at a low level.(2)Foreign language learning boredom is negatively correlated with the classroom environment and the oral willingness to communicate in the classroom,and pride was vice versa;Foreign language learning boredom is strongly correlated with factors such as task orientation,teacher support,and classroom boredom.Pride is strongly correlated with task orientation and test-related pride.(3)The English classroom environment has obvious predictive power on the oral willingness to communicate in the classroom.Foreign language learning boredom and pride had a double parallel and partial mediating effect between the classroom environment and classroom oral willingness to communicate,indicating that the classroom environment had an impact on classroom oral willingness to communicate through foreign language learning boredom and pride respectively.It can be seen that classroom environment can promote learners’ communicative willingness in English class by mobilizing their positive emotions,while negative emotions can be reversed.Based on the above results,suggestions were raised from two aspects on the mediating role of foreign language learning boredom and pride in English classroom environment and willingness to communicate: educators should intervene in negative emotions such as boredom;a variety of teaching and assessment methods should be used to fully mobilize learners’ pride in order to promote the occurrence of learners’ classroom oral communication behavior,enhance the sense of control and value of English learning,so as to improve the level of oral English.