An Investigation Into Willingness To Communicate In English Of Grade-2 Senior Middle School Students

The emphasis of Chinese English instruction has gradually transferred from mastery of language knowledge to cultivation of students' communication competence in English.The communication competence in English is closely related to Willingness to Communicate(WTC)in the second language,because students' WTC in L2 influences their attitude to take part in communication and their performance in it.Hence,motivating students' WTC is of vital importance for students to improve communication competence.However,the author found that there are few profound researches which attempt to survey WTC of high school students nowadays.Therefore,we find it essential to carry out the study on the WTC in English of high school students.This study,taking 307 Grade-2 students in Zhangzhou NO.2 Middle School and Nanjing NO.2 Middle School as the subjects,adopted questionnaires and interviews and made an empirical study,aiming to explore the WTC in English of middle school students as well as to analyze the data with SPSS 21.0.The result shows that: 1)WTC in English of Grade-2 middle school students is overall at a low level,and the sort order of WTC in English in the four dimensions is WTC in listening> WTC in reading> WTC in speaking> WTC in writing.There is no significant difference in WTC between urban students and rural students.2)There is a positive correlativity between students' WTC in English and English scores,whose correlation coefficient is 0.402,which is a comparatively significant correlation.3)The factors influencing WTC in English of Grade-2 middle school students can be categorized into individual factors and social factors.The sort order of individual factors is beliefs in English communication> English proficiency> self-perceived communication competence> learning motivation> personality.The sort order of social factors are teachers' encouragement> topics> learning pressure> class atmosphere> forms of classroom activities> family's attitudes toward English learning.Finally,from the perspective of pedagogy,combining WTC with traditional English class teaching in high school,the author has proposed some suggestions for teaching,so as to motivate students' WTC in English as well as improve English communication competence and achieve the aim of improving English level.