Willingness to Communicate in English among Iranian EFL Students

تعداد105 صفحه در فایل word

Department of English Language and Literature

M.A. Thesis

Willingness to Communicate in English among Iranian EFL Students

English, which is defined as an international language, is used by more than oneand a half billion people (Strevens, 1992) as a first, second, or foreign language forcommunication purposes. Consequently, the purpose of teaching English has shifted fromthe mastery of structure to the ability to use the language for communicative purposes.Thus, the issues of whether learners would communicate in English when they had thechance and what would affect their willingness to communicate gain importance.Recently, a “Willingness to Communicate” (WTC) model was developed by McIntyre etal. (1998) to explain and predict second language communication.

The objective of the present study was to examine whether institute students whowere learning English as a foreign language in the Iranian context were willing tocommunicate when they had an opportunity and whether the WTC model explained therelations among social-psychological, linguistic and communication variables in thiscontext. The present study used quantitative data collection and analysis procedures. A questionnaire wasadministered to 194 randomly selected institute students in Sanandaj, Iran. The Structural Equation Model (SEM) analysis was conducted to examinethe interrelations among students’ willingness to communicate in English, communication anxiety, perceived communication competence,attitude toward the international community, and self-confidence.

The results revealed that students were somewhat willing to communicate in

English, had a positive attitude toward theinternational community, had a moderate communication anxiety, perceived themselvessomewhat competent to communicate in English, and were moderately self-confident. Thesestudents’ willingness to communicate was found to be directly related to their attitudetoward the international community, their perceived linguistic self-confidence, and their perceived communicative competence. Finally, their international posture and their anxiety were correlated with their communicative competence.Nonetheless, this study has implications for teachers. By increasing perceived competence and reducing language anxiety, the willingness to communicate may lead to more language use in the classroom.

Keywords: Willingness to communicate, anxiety, communicative competence, international posture, EFL students