A Study On The Influence Of High School Students’ Foreign Language Enjoyment On Their Willingness To Communicate In English In The Class

Nowadays,more and more classroom teaching advocates that students should be given more opportunities to communicate in order to improve their communicative ability.In China’s English classroom,students are not very willing to express their ideas in English,that is,students’ willingness to communicate in class is not strong,which is contrary to the essence of English teaching.The theoretical models of willingness to communicate in second language mostly emphasize personality trait and situational trait,ignoring emotions,especially the influence of positive emotions.In recent years,with the introduction of positive psychology into the field of second language acquisition,experts and scholars have begun to focus on the positive emotions of individuals,such as pleasure,happiness and enjoyment in the process of second language learning.In order to enrich the theoretical model of willingness to communicate in second language and better improve students’ willingness to communicate,this study aims to explore the impact of high school students’ foreign language enjoyment on their willingness to communicate in English class.This study took 227 students from different grades in a key high school in Inner Mongolia as the research object,using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to explore the following three questions:(1)What’s the current situation of senior high students’ foreign language enjoyment?(2)What’s the current situation of senior high students’ willingness to communicate in second language?(3)Does senior high students’ foreign language enjoyment influence their willingness to communicate in second language? If so,which dimension works as the most important predictor?The major findings are as follows:(1)The foreign language enjoyment of senior high school students is generally at the upper-middle level.Foreign language enjoyment-teacher has the highest score in the three dimensions,followed by foreign language enjoyment-private,and foreign language enjoyment-environment;The gender difference is not obvious.Although girls’ foreign language pleasure is slightly higher than boys’,there is no significant difference;As far as the grade difference is concerned,the foreign language enjoyment of senior one students is the highest,followed by senior two students and senior three students.The foreign language enjoyment of senior one students and senior three students is significantly different,but the difference between senior one students and senior two students is not significant,and the difference between senior three students and senior two students is also not significant.(2)Senior high school students’ willingness to communicate in English in class is generally at the middle level.In the two dimensions of willingness to communicate,students’ willingness to communicate in English is relatively high in form-based activities,while students’ willingness to communicate in class English is relatively low in meaning-based activities;The gender difference is not obvious.Although girls’ willingness to communicate is slightly higher than boys’,there is no significant difference;As far as the grade difference is concerned,the willingness to communicate in English in class is the highest among the students in Senior One,followed by the students in Senior Two and the students in Senior Three;Willingness to communicate in English between the students in Senior One and Senior Two is significantly different,and the students in Senior One and Senior Three are also significantly different,but the difference between the students in Senior Two and Senior Three is not significant.(3)Senior high school students’ foreign language enjoyment has a positive predictive effect on their willingness to communicate in English in class.Among the three dimensions of foreign language enjoyment,private factor,as the most important predictor,affects their willingness to communicate in English to a large extent.Environment factor is also one of the predictive factors,while the teacher factor,which has a relatively low impact on their willingness to communicate in English,cannot be used as a predictor;The private enjoyment mainly comes from the satisfaction of overcoming difficult tasks,the positive cognition of English,and the discovery of new and interesting things in the process of learning;Although the teacher factor cannot be used as a predictor,the teacher’s encouragement,support and professionalism will indirectly affect students’ willingness to communicate in English;Environment factor comes from active classroom atmosphere and harmonious classmate atmosphere,which will improve students’ willingness to communicate in class English.