A Study On Senior High School Students’ Willingness To Communicate In English Class And The Influencing Factors

Foreign language teaching and learning emphasize the cultivation of learners’ competence to effectively use the language,which is also proposed by the ministry of education in English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017).The application of the language is not only an effective way to help them acquire the language,but also a way to test their language ability.So students’ willingness to communicate with the language is extremely important,which has drawn more and more scholars’ attentions today,who have done considerable researches on it.However,up to now there are few researches on the high school students’ willingness to communicate in English classroom in China;moreover,the author of this research has found that there are many problems in it.Therefore,this study is made on the current situation and the influencing factors of the high school students’ willingness to communicate,with the application of the established models of communicative willingness by some influential experts and Constructivism Learning Theory.It is hoped to shed some light on improving the willingness to communicate of high school students as well as expanding the relevant research.To achieve the research objective,two research questions were designed:(1)What is the current situation of high school students’ willingness to communicate in English class?(2)What are the main factors affecting high school students’ willingness to communicate in English class? There are 166 senior two high school students selected as research participants,who are from Qujiang No.1 Middle Schoolin Xi’an.Both qualitative and quantitative studies were made.The questionnaire was designed based on the models of the experts,and a pilot study was made on it,whose results were tested by SPSS 23.0 for reliability and validity.After the questionnaire survey,six students were interviewed on the eight questions designed on the basis of the relevant theory.Then the data analyses were made,and the results were discussed.Through the analysis and discussion,this paper finally draws the following conclusions: first,senior the high school students’ willingness to communicate is at a medium level;second,the major factors that affect their willingness to communicate include personality,familiarity with classroom communication content,relationship between classmates or group members,complexity of teaching content,classroom atmosphere and being afraid of losing face when making mistakes,which are arranged according to the degree of their influences.Based on the findings above,it puts forward some suggestions on how to improve the high school students’ willingness to communicate in the English classroom,and on the further research in this field.