The Effect Of Teacher’s Implicit And Explicit Corrective Feedback On Junior High School Students’ Willingness To Communicate In English Class

Willingness to communicate(WTC),which proposed by Mc Croskey and Baer(1985),means the probability of engaging in communication when people feel free to talk.The English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2022)casts great emphasis on students’ communicative competence.To foster students’ communicative competence,students must be willing to communicate.Therefore,it is crucial to improve students’ WTC in English class.The existing researches on WTC focused on individual variables that affect WTC,such as motivation,affective factors and learner’s personality.Only a few studies have examined the factors that influence students’ WTC in English class from the perspective of teacher-student interaction.Teachers’ teaching has a significant impact on students’ learning.Corrective feedback,often employed by the teacher,can be divided into explicit and implicit corrective feedback in terms of the degree of explicitness of the feedback provided.Teacher uses corrective feedback to correct students’ errors in their spoken English,which may have an impact on students’ subsequent WTC.Therefore,this paper investigates the current situation of junior high school students’ WTC in English class,examines the effects of teacher’s implicit and explicit corrective feedback on students’ WTC in English class,and detects the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on the in-class WTC of junior high school students of different English proficiency.More specifically,this study is set out to answer the following three questions:1.What are the general characteristics of junior high school students’ WTC in English class?2.What are the effects of explicit and implicit corrective feedback on junior high school students’ WTC in English class?3.How do explicit and implicit corrective feedback influence the in-class WTC of junior high school students of different English proficiency?A mixed research method was employed to explore the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on students’ WTC.A questionnaire was administered to226 junior high school students in Shanghai to find out the current characteristics of junior high school students’ WTC in English class.Two parallel classes of 75 students were then selected to participate in the teaching experiment,with students in one class receiving explicit corrective feedback and students in the other class receiving implicit corrective feedback.At the end of the experiment,the 75 students in the two experimental classes were given the WTC questionnaire again to observe the changes in their WTC after receiving the corrective feedback.Six students of different English proficiency levels were then selected from each of the two experimental groups to examine the effects of explicit and implicit corrective feedback on the in-class WTC of students of different English proficiency levels.The results of the study revealed that junior high school students’ WTC in English class is at medium level.The three dimensions in WTC is seen in terms of teacher-student interaction,peer interaction and individual English tasks.Compared to teacher-student interaction,students are more willing to engage in peer interaction and individual English tasks in English.A comparative study of the two experimental classes found that students who received explicit corrective feedback show a decrease in their WTC in English class,particularly in teacher-student interaction,where the decrease in students’ WTC is salient.Implicit corrective feedback from teachers,on the other hand,has a positive impact on students’ WTC in English class,with all students in the implicit corrective feedback group showing some degree of improvement.What’s more,in terms of the effects of explicit and implicit corrective feedback on WTC of students with different English proficiency,students with high English proficiency are not affected by implicit corrective feedback since most of them are confident in their communicative competence and English proficiency,while students with medium and low English proficiency are able to achieve self-correction after receiving implicit corrective feedback and then remember the target language better,with the effect of increasing self-confidence in learning English and then enhancing WTC.In the explicit corrective feedback group,all students in the different English proficiency group receive negative influences brought by the explicit corrective feedback.The students with high English proficiency feel that the classroom atmosphere becomes awkward after receiving the explicit corrective feedback,thus reducing their WTC.Students from medium and low English proficiency groups,on the other hand,feel embarrassed and face-losing in front of their peers after receiving explicit corrective feedback,thus decreasing their self-confidence in learning English.Then their WTC in English class was significantly reduced.Based on the findings and analysis,this study has drawn some pedagogical implications for teachers to use the appropriate feedback in order to foster students’ WTC.Firstly,teachers should arrange appropriate teaching tasks suitable for students to stimulate their motivation.Secondly,teachers should try to use implicit corrective feedback in the classroom to help students achieve self-correction and protect their motivation to learn.At the same time,teachers should create a relaxing and harmonious environment,which is conducive to enhancing students’ WTC.Finally,the thesis also presents the limitations of this study and suggestions for future research to make the research in this field more comprehensive and scientific.