The Effects Of Visualization And Goal-setting On EFL Learners’ Willingness To Communicate And Oral Proficiency In Senior High School

For foreign language learners,willingness to communicate is particularly important for successful language acquisition.At present,students’ willingness to communicate is generally not high,so it is necessary to find an effective way to improve students’ willingness to communicate.Researches on willingness to communicate mainly focus on identifying factors that influence willingness to communicate in various contexts.There are few researches on how to enhance EFL students’ willingness to communicate in classroom settings.This paper aims at examining the effects of visualization and goal setting on senior high school students’ willingness to communicate and oral proficiency,and exploring senior high school students’ views about three treatments.The study is based on Mac Intyre’s heuristic model of WTC,the L2 motivational self system and affective filter hypothesis.Using questionnaires,oral tests and interview,the study conducts a 5-week experiment on four parallel classes of senior high school in a county of Gansu Province.Four parallel classes are randomly divided into three experimental classes and one control class.Three experimental classes are visualization,goal setting and visualization + goal setting.Before the experiment,the students in the four classes are pretested on their willingness to communicate and oral English.After the experiment,students’ willingness to communicate and oral English are tested again and 10 students are randomly selected from each experimental class for interview.SPSS 23 is used to analyze the experimental data,which mainly includes descriptive statistical analysis,one-way analysis of variance,and paired sample T test.The results are as follows: First,visualization,goal setting and visualization + goal setting have no significant effect on senior high school students’ willingness to communicate.However,by comparing mean scores of each class,it is found that students’ WTC in visualization + goal setting is higher than that of the goal setting and visualization.Second,according to the results of a one-way of ANOVA,visualization,goal setting and visualization + goal setting have significant effects on senior high school students’ oral proficiency.The results of paired samples T-test show that three intervention activities have a positive effect on oral proficiency.Students’ oral scores in visualization + goal setting and goal setting are higher than that of visualization.Finally,as indicated from the interview,some students in three experimental classes think that the treatments may not be suitable for all students.On the whole,the students in three experimental classes are willing to participate in classroom activities.It is found that compared with students in visualization class,the students in visualization + goal setting and goal setting are more willing to participate in intervention activities.