| Willingness to communicate (WTC) has aroused widespread concern of linguists and educational psychologists in recent years, and the study of willingness to communicate has become one of the research focuses in the field of Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Communication. Macintyre et al. (1998) argue that the ultimate goal of the language learning process should stimulate students'willingness to seek out communication opportunities and the willingness to communicate actually in them, the proper objective for L2 education is to create the willingness to communicate. Chinese English learners still tend to be unwilling to communicate in English in the classroom. However, researches on WTC in L2 are mainly conducted in the western world. The researches conducted on willingness to communicate are still in exploratory phase in our country. Based on the theoretical foundation of Gardner (2001)'s social-educational model and Macintyre (1998)'s heuristical model of WTC, the present study integrated the existing theory of willingness to communicate and previous empirical studies, and then formulated a hypothesized model of the relationship between WTC and its factors, aiming at exploring the factors of willingness to communicate inside the classroom of Chinese English majors.In order to testify the hypotheses proposed before, this study developed the required questionnaires which were adopted and modified from former researchers (MacIntyre and Charos, 1996;Macintyre et al.,2001;Hashimo, 2002;Shi,2009) to investigate the factors of WTC, LM, SPCC, L2CA, L2UF and L2P. There are 217 juniors majoring in English from three Universities in Gan Su participated in accomplishing the questionnaires. After initial data processing performed by SPSS12.0 for measurement model specification, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was also conducted to estimate and confirm the hypothesized measurement model for all latent factors having more than one observed variables. LISREL8.0 software was operated to formulate the causal model, and then the model identification and evaluation were carried out. After a series of examination and tests of the hypothesized model, the ultimate model was obtained with the reliable data.The major findings are summarized as follows: (1) The latent factors of learning motivation, L2 communication anxiety and self-perceived communication competence had direct effects on willingness to communicate; (2) The paths from L2 communication anxiety to willingness to communicate, learning motivation, and self-perceived communication competence were statistically significant, meanwhile,it also indirectly influence willingness to communicate through learning motivation and self-perceived communication competence; (3) Both students'self-perceived communication competence willingness to communicate had a positive influence on their L2 use frequency; (4) The path coefficients from L2UF to L2P, L2P to WTC had virtually zero predictive power, which was not strong enough to reach a significant level.Pedagogically, English teachers were suggested to consider the influencing factors of WTC and to make much effort to enhance learners'willingness to communicate inside the classroom, and thus could extend this willingness outside the classroom settings. Methodologically, the application of SEM (Structural Equation Model) can produce some sophisticated data, which enriched the research findings of willingness to communicate with multiple factors. It is recommended that future study of WTC should take some social factors (i.e. gender, age) into consideration, and investigate psychological and cognitive factors by employing quantitative and qualitative approaches, thus form a comprehensive picture of the interactive effects of WTC and its variables.
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