A Study On The Middle Asian Learners’ Willingness To Communicate In Oral Chinese Inside And Outside Class

The concept of "Willingness to communicate"(WTC)was introduced from first language acquisition area into the second language acquisition area in the 1990s.Although it has got great attention in second language acquisition,we could see few studies focusing on specific learners’WTC in oral Chinese.However,the new situation of teaching Chinese as a foreign language requires us to refine features of different learners coming from different areas.Chinese learners who are from Kyrgyzstan,Kazakhstan,Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are becoming more and more due to the special geographical advantages and long history of the Silk Road Economy.Based on such scholar background and current situation,this study chose 31 students as our subjects.All these 31 students are coming from Kyrgyzstan,Kazakhstan,Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.They are studying Chinese in Nanjing University,Nanjing Normal University and Shaanxi Normal University now.Combining both quantitative research and qualitative research,we collected data of 31 students’ willingness to communicate in oral Chinese inside and outside class based on the method of questionnaire and interview.According to the data,we try to analyze and study the current situation and features of the Middle Asian Chinese learners’ willingness to communicate in oral Chinese inside and outside class.Also,this article try to study factors which may affect the subjects’ willingness to communicate inside and outside class in Chinese,such as L2 anxiety,Self-perceived Chinese competence,L2 Motivation and International posture.This study used SPSS22.0 to analyze the data got from questionnaire:(1)Use descriptive statistics to reflect the current situation and features of the Middle Asian Chinese learners’ willingness to communicate irn oral Chinese inside and outside class;(2)Use independent sample T Test,ANOVA Test to analyze objective background variables such as gender,Chinese level and degree’s impact on the Middle Asian Chinese learners’ willingness to communicate in oral Chinese inside and outside;(3)Use the correlation analysis to analyze the dependency between four sentiment variables and Middle Asian students’ WTC in oral Chinese inside and outside class.These four sentiment variables include L2 anxiety,Self-perceived Chinese competence,L2 Motivation,International posture.Main findings of our quantitative studies are concluded as follows:Firstly,Middle Asia learners’ willingness to communicate in oral Chinese inside and outside class is in a general level.Secondly,compared with task-oriented communication and inquiry-oriented communication,students are more willing to communicate when it’s about common situation in class.The WTC in oral Chinese outside class is higher than inside class.And we found that there is close correlation between students’ inside and outside WTC in oral Chinese.Thirdly,objective background variables such as gender,Chinese level and degree have no prominent influences on Middle Asian students’ WTC in oral Chinese.Fourthly,through investigating the dependency between the four sentiment variables and Middle Asian students’WTC in oral Chinese,we have found that Self-perceived Chinese competence,International posture have positive correlation with students’ WTC in oral Chinese while L2 anxiety appears a negative correlation with students’ WTC in oral Chinese.As for L2 motivation,the results show that although most of the Middle Asian students are instrumental learners,there is no significant difference between instrumental learners,intergrativeness learners and results-oriented learners.Main findings of our qualitative studies are concluded as follows:Firstly,Our subjects are easy to feel embarrassed in Chinese class.High degree of anxiety and the idea of saving face will hamper their Chinese communication in class.Subjects have few communication objects outside class,if they have,the objects are limited to a small number of Chinese students,teachers or language partners.Dialect is the major obstacle facing by our subjects when they are communicating outside class.