A Study On The Relationship Between Willingness To Communicate With Chinese Language In Classroom And Self-perceived Communication Competence Of High School Students In Thailand

At the beginning of this century,there is a new wave of Chinese learning in Thailand,but the Chinese language education system still focus on “what students can talk about” “how students speak”,and neglects their willingness.Based on the second foreign language communicative intention theory(WTC),594 students from five high school in south central Thailand participated in this study,and three research questions were answered by analyzing the questionnaire results of students' classroom communicative intention and self-perceived communication competence by SPSS.23,and a semi-structured interview with eight students and three teachers.Firstly,this study analyzes the present situation of willingness to communicate in classroom(WTCI)and self-perceived communication competence(SPCC)of Thai high school students,and finds that the level of students' WTCI is low,and the level of SPCC is not high either.As a result,Pearson correlation test shows that there is a positive correlation between WTCI and SPCC among Thai high school students.To find the factors influenced Thailand high school students' classroom communicative intention,8 students and 3 Chinese teachers were selected to conduct semi-structured interviews.Some important factors which arecommunicative object,language attitude and language environment are explored by this study.While,Chinese proficiency was an important factor affecting Thailand high school students' SPCC.On the basis of this research findings,some suggestions are put forward for students,teachers and administrators of Thailand high schools to solve the problem of "unwilling to speak" of high school students in south-central of Thailand and improve their Chinese spoken ability.