Examining Impact Of Senior High School English Learners’ Classroom Environment Perception On Their Willingness To Communicate

The newly revised English Curriculum Standards for General High School(2017Edition 2022 Revision)emphasizes that English teaching should focus on cultivating students’ communicative abilities,enabling them to effectively use spoken and written English to express meaning and engage in interpersonal and cross-cultural communication.Willingness to communicate(WTC),as an important individual difference factor,strongly affects English learners’ willingness to seek out communication opportunities and participate in communication.Therefore,in order to effectively improve students’ English communicative competence,it is crucial to foster their communicative willingness.In the educational context of our country where English is learned as a foreign language(EFL),English language classroom is an essential platform for learners to experience interactive communication in English,while currently few studies have examined the role that classroom environmental factors play in emerging their WTC.Therefore,from the perspective of situational WTC,the present study aims to incorporate classroom environmental variables into a broader WTC study,exploring the impact of senior high school English learners’ classroom environment perception(CEP)on their WTC.Using a combination of questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews,this study was conducted with 419 senior high school students in a provincial capital city in East China to address the following three research questions:(1)What is the status quo of senior high school students’ WTC in English classes?(2)What is the status quo of senior high school students’ perceptions of classroom environment in English classes?(3)What is the correlation between senior high school students’ CEP and their WTC in English classes? Among dimensions of CEP,which could predict WTC?Based on the analysis of the questionnaire and semi-structured interview results,the main findings of this research can be summarized as follows:(1)Senior high school English learners’ WTC is not fairy high but optimistic,revealing that students come at a threshold of moving from “sometimes willing” to “willing”.There exists significant gender difference in WTC in English and female students are more willing to communicate in English than boys in class.(2)Senior high school English learners’ CEP is positive in general,with the five dimensions of CEP ranging from highest to lowest satisfaction: teacher support,class order,task orientation,cooperation and student cohesiveness.A significant gender difference can be found regarding the perception of classroom environment in English class,and female students’ CEP is better than that of male students’ in general.(3)Senior high school English learners’ CEP positively correlates with WTC to a moderate degree.Students’ CEP has a positive predictive impact on their WTC in English at a significant level,with CEP-cooperation being the dominant,followed by task orientation,teacher support and student cohesiveness,while CEP-class order does not play a predictive role on WTC in English.Students’ positive perceptions of classroom environmental factors can promote their communicative willingness.Based on the above findings,this study puts forward some suggestions to English teachers on how to improve the English classroom environment,so as to better stimulate students’ WTC in English and effectively cultivate students’ communicative competence in English.