Correlation Study Between Students' Willingness To Communicate And Self-perceived Communication Competence In English In A High School

Second language teaching is giving priority to students' practical language application instead of their exam-orientated ability.However,English learners in China are usually regarded as excellent test takers rather than outstanding English speakers.Therefore,teachers are supposed to lay emphasis on stimulating students' willingness to communicate(WTC)in L2 and cultivating their communication competence,and thus improving English teaching efficiency during the process of foreign language teaching.There are plentiful studies about willingness to communicate(WTC)and self-perceived communication competence(SPCC)abroad.Nevertheless,the researches on L2 willingness to communicate(WTC)and selfperceived communication competence(SPCC)in China still remain at an elementary stage.Besides,as a special group,high school students' performance in foreign language learning can to some extent well reflect the defects existing in high school EFL classroom.This study aims at investigating the correlation between willingness to communicate(WTC)and self-perceived communication competence(SPCC)in English among students in a high school,through which some effective pedagogical implications can be obtained for high school English teaching.After reviewing some major researches on willingness to communicate(WTC)and self-perceived communication competence(SPCC)at home and abroad,a survey is carried out at Law Ting Pong Secondary School in Guang Dong Province so as to explore the following three questions:(1)General situation of students' willingness to communicate in English in a high school;(2)Current picture of students' selfperceived communication competence in English in a high school;(3)Relationship between students' willingness to communicate and self-perceived communication competence in English in a high school.120 participants in Grade Two are randomly drafted from four natural classes at Law Ting Pong Secondary School in Guang Dong Province.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied in this study,and the research instruments are composed of two questionnaires: Willingness to Communicate in English Questionnaire(WTCEQ),Self-perceived Communication Competence Questionnaire(SPCCQ)and a semi-structured interview.Moreover,Statistical Package 17.0 for the Social Science is employed to analyze the quantitative data.Three major findings are summed up as follows:(1)The students in a high school possess relatively low willingness to communicate in English.In detail,students' willingness to communicate is lower when they interact with strangers and teachers,and their willingness to communicate is proved to be stronger only when they communicate with friends and acquaintances.(2)The participants' self-perceived communication competence in this study also remains at a low level.In specific,students perceive themselves less competent to interact with strangers and teachers or when they are in daily context,and they consider themselves high communication competence only when they start a conversation with friends and acquaintances.(3)There exists a significantly positive correlation between willingness to communicate and self-perceived communication competence,suggesting that the higher one's self-assessment of his communication competence is,the stronger his willingness to communicate is.On the contrary,the lower one's self-assessment of his communication competence is,the weaker his willingness to communicate is.Based on the findings above,some limitations and suggestions for English language teaching are briefly stated.Furthermore,some pedagogical implications are offered for future researches on L2 WTC and SPCC in high schools.