Middle School Students' Communication Intention, The Relationship Between Learning Strategies And English Study

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is kind of tendencies and inclination that people prefer to talk to somebody with some specific contexts. This kind of willingness to communicate decides the frequencies of talking with others with the given opportunities. Language learning (L2) strategies is specific actions, behaviors, steps or techniques that students often intentionally use to improve their progress in developing L2skills. According to the researches done before, we find that there is few studies on willingness to communicate of middle school students in China. And also, the studies about willingness to communicate, language learning strategies and English achievements is not enough to explore the deeper relationships among the three. So the purpose of this research is to cover the shortages of ancient studies, to revise the willingness to communicate scale for Chinese middle school students and to seek for truly relationships among WTC, L2strategies and English achievements. Then we can clearly know and learn the importance and necessity of WTC and L2Strategies through English education.There are two parts in this study. One is about the revision of the WTC scale published in1992from McCroskey. The number of the subjects in the first part selected in Zouzhuang middle school and Ninghai foreign language school was400,368of them were available, including182junior school students and186senior high school students. The scale includes17items in all related to six factors--four communication contexts (public speaking, talking in meetings, talking in small groups, and talking in dyads) and two types of receivers (strangers, acquaintances and friends) after plenty of statistical analysis. The estimate of internal reliability is0.806. The scale has high reliability and validity to assure the second investigation of the research to go with a swing.The second part of the study is about an investigation by using the WTC scale and the questionnaire of language learning strategies. The questionnaire of L2strategies published in1990from Oxford was improved to have a good structure and high reliability and validity, so it can be used in a direct way. The subjects in this part were selected from four schools of Jiangsu province, including Suining senior high school, Xinshiji junior middle school, Wanglin junior middle school, and Ninghai foreign language school. The total number of them was700,659students were available in all, including380junior middle school students and279senior high school students. Several conclusions were found after plenty of statistical analysis:(1) There is a high correlation between willingness to communicate and oral English achievements. Four factors, including actor strangers, acquaintances and friends, talking in dyads, and public speaking of WTC scale, have predictive power to oral English achievements through regression analysis.(2) Language learning strategies are highly correlated with English achievements in written examinations. Memory strategy, cognitive strategy, meta-cognitive strategy, and affective strategy have highly predictive power to English achievements in written examinations through regression analysis.(3) Willingness to communicate not only has direct effects to English achievements but also has indirect effects to English achievements through the intervening variable--language learning strategies. And the mediating effect accounts for66.5%of the total effects.