Transcript Students` willingness to communicate in different classroom tasks

Students' willingness to
communicate in different
classroom tasks
Christopher Weaver
Willingness to Communicate
Willingness to communicate (WTC) is
conceptualized as the probability of engaging in
communication (speaking and writing) when
free to do so.
As such, WTC is thought to be a predictor of L2
use
The WTC Model
EFL Classroom & the
Speaking Tasks done
within it
Research Questions
• To what extent does students’ willingness to
communicate vary across different speaking
tasks done inside an oral communication class?
• To what extent does students’ level of
willingness, anxiety and perceived ability to do
the different speaking tasks differ before and
after receiving English instruction?
• To what extent does pre-task planning and
having access to written notes/text influence
students’ willingness to do the different speaking
tasks inside an oral communication class?
Participants in the study
307 Japanese university students attending a
national university in Tokyo, Japan. 94 of the
students were female and remaining 213
students were male.
These non-English majors were taking a
compulsory English oral communication
course. The class met once a week for 90
minutes for a total of 13 meetings.
The goal of the oral communication class is
prepare students to travel to an Englishspeaking country.
Experiment Design
The students completed a survey on the first and
last classes. The survey asked students to
indicate their level of:
• willingness to do 12 different speaking tasks
inside the class (pre-α:.91; post-α:.94)
• anxiety to do the 12 speaking tasks (pre-α:.93;
post-α:.96)
• ability to successfully do the 12 speaking tasks
(pre-α:.93; post-α:.96)
And…
• The perceived usefulness of pre-task planning
(pre-α:.96; post-α:.97) and having access to
written notes while performing the tasks (preα:.96; post-α:.97).
Tasks from a rhetorical perspective
Item
Speaking Tasks
s1
Describe 5 things that you did during your last holiday
s2
Ask someone 5 questions about their past holiday
s3
Say a short self-introduction
s4
Explain to someone how to get to the closest train station
s5
Tell your partner the flight schedules (departure and arrival time) to travel overseas
s6
Invite someone to do something with you
s7
Role-play with your partner the situation of making a hotel reservation overseas
s8
Advise someone what they should do when in trouble while traveling
s9
Recommend to someone where they should go on their next vacation
s10
Convince someone that where you want to go on holidays is a better choice than theirs
s11
Decide with your partner what is the best thing to eat on a restaurant menu.
s12
Discuss the pros and cons of traveling to a destination at different times of the year
Willingness across the different
speaking tasks
Students’ willingness to do different
speaking tasks
Perceived usefulness of pre-task
planning (WTCTP) and having
accessing to notes (WTCTN)
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wtptn
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Concluding Remarks
Students’ willingness varied across different
speaking tasks within an EFL oral
communication class.
Pre-Post instruction gains found in terms of WTC,
anxiety, perceived ability as well as the
perceived usefulness of pre-task planning and
having access to notes.
Perceived usefulness of pre-task planning and
having access to notes, however, varies across
different speaking tasks.