Action Research On The Application Of Experiential Learning To Improving Students’ English WTC In Junior School

MacIntyre(1998)defined willingness to communicate(WTC)in the second language as “a readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a special person or persons by using a L2”.Mac Intyre(1998)also proposed the WTC is one of the most important emotional factors that affect the effect of teaching and learning.What’s more,language teaching is failure if it does not achieve this goal.Besides,many findings have shown that learners’ willingness to communicate(WTC)in L2 influences whether they take part in communication and finally the frequency of L2 use.Therefore,it is important to stimulate English learners’ WTC.However,the author found that students of junior school in the author’s class are always unwilling to use English inside and outside the classroom through communication with the students.In English classes,they are busy taking notes,listening to teachers,with little time to think,no passion to participate in classroom activities,no opportunity to express their ideas in English.After class,they also seldom use English.Although they hope to use English through experience it in real situation,they have few chances.Facing the problem of students’ unwillingness to communicate in English and after consulting a lot of literature,the author put forward the hypothesis that the experiential learning can improve students’ English WTC through creating environment that can support an experience activity around a subject.In order to explore how to improve students’ English WTC of junior school by using the experiential learning,the author selected 56 junior students Grade Eight from XX Middle School,a junior school in Ganzhou.as the research object,and carried out two rounds of four-month action research.This study mainly answers the following three questions:Question 1: What are the factors that affect English WTC of junior school students?Question 2: Can English WTC of the junior school students be significantly improved under experiential learning?Question 3: How can experiential learning improve students’ English WTC?Before the intervention,the author adopted questionnaires referring to Mac Intyre et al.’s(2001)and Shi Yunzhang’s(2008)to follow students’ changes in English WTC and detect the influential factors of English WTC.Interviews are adopted as complementary research method.In the first round of action research,the author create environment according to different topics.Then,students are encouraged to experience by using English.With the help of the questionnaire and interview of ten students chosen in random,the author found that ten students made an achievement in English WTC.While sometimes they are unwilling to communicate because of the influence of the situational factors like topic,matter of face.Students still shows low WTC outside the class.After reflection and adjustment,the second round is adopted.Students are asked to work as a group to take part in experience activities after class and then show their works.The author finds students are more active in communicate in English.After that,post-questionnaire and interviews are used to check students’ English WTC including listening,reading,speaking and writing.SPSS23.0 were used to analyze the questionnaires.The results show that: 1)the degree of influential factors of English WTC is English proficiency(3.68)>self-perceived communication competence(3.54)> Topics(3.42)> matter of face(3.38)> communication anxiety(3.27)> class atmosphere(3.20)> teachers’ encouragement(3.165)> classroom activities(3.09);2)the application of experiential learning in English learning can improve students’ English WTC in junior school;3)introducing topic and creating atmosphere properly can stimulate active experience.