Effects Of Willingness To Communicate In The Classroom On Self-Efficacy Among High School Students

Self-efficacy refers to one's belief in the ability to succeed in a specific situation or accomplish a task.In language teaching,according to Bandura's self-efficacy theory,if a student's self-efficacy is enhanced,he is more likely to devote himself in the face of difficulties and persist longer.The willingness to communicate in second languages(L2)is the desire to communicate with a particular person or group at a particular time.It is of great significance in the second language acquisition,and it is attracting more and more attention from researchers at home and abroad.Although the research on self-efficacy and willingness to communicate within classroom is very rich,there is not much research on the combination of the two,especially for high school students.In order to provide some inspirations for high school English teaching,the author studies the effects of willingness to communicate in the classroom on self-efficacy among high school students.In this research,Self-Efficacy of Learning Abilities Questionnaire which was adapted from original questionnaire composed by Pintrich&De Groot(1990)(Cronbach ?=0.952;KMO value=0.849),Willingness to Communicate in the Classroom Questionnaire which was adapted from original questionnaire composed by Mac Intyre,2007;(Cronbach ?=0.907;KMO value=0.818)and an interview are adopted to investigate 132 high school students of grade one randomly selected from a high school in Ganzhou.The aim of the research is to explore three problems:1.What's the overall situation of high school students' self-efficacy?2.What's the overall situation of senior high school students' willingness to communicate in the English classroom in speaking,reading,writing and listening comprehension?3.Which of so many dimensions of willingness to communicate in the classroom(listening,speaking,reading,writing)may have a significant predictive effect on high school students' self-efficacy?Collected data was analyzed by descriptive analysis,Pearson correlationanalysis and regression analysis with SPSS 16.0.The results are listed as follow:1.The overall self-efficacy of high school students is at a middle level(M=3.32).2.The high school students' willingness to communicate in the classroom is at a middle level(M=85.23),a little higher than the average level.The L2 WTC levels in reading,speaking and listening are much higher than L2 WTC in writing.Listening is high school students' favorite skill in which they have the strongest L2 WTC in the classroom while writing skill is perceived as their least popular one.Reading ranks secondly and speaking comes thirdly.3.There is a relatively significant and positive correlation between self-efficacy and L2 willingness to communicate in the classroom(p=.594**),and there is a relatively significant correlation between self-efficacy and the L2 willingness to communicate of listening,speaking,reading and writing in the classroom.There is high significant linear relationship between self-efficacy and willingness to communicate in listening,reading,writing and speaking;Regression equation is Y=1.208+.316X1+.162X2-.047X3+.203X4,it shows that willingness to communicate in listening,reading,speaking and writing have significantly predictive effect on their self-efficacy(willingness to listen: regression coefficient(beta)=.316,willingness to read: regression coefficient(beta)=.162,willingness to write:regression coefficient(beta)=-.047,willingness to speak: regression coefficient(beta)=.203).It indicates that for each additional unit of the willingness to listen,students' English self-efficacy increases by 0.316 units,for each additional unit of the willingness to read,students' English self-efficacy increases by 0.162 units,for each additional unit of the willingness to speak,students' English self-efficacy increases by 0.203 units,for each additional unit of the willingness to write,students' English self-efficacy decreases by 0.047 units.Enriching the research findings,the research provides pedagogical implications and limitations for further studies on self-efficacy and L2 willingness to communicate of high school students.