A Study Of Junior High School Students’ Willingness To Communicate In English Classroom

English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 edition)emphasizes students’ comprehensive language competence,especially communicative competence.To enhance communicative competence in English,students need to engage themselves in communication in English.Willingness to communicate(WTC)in English is a latent variable that directly impacts students’ willingness to engage in communication practices.In this sense,it requires the stimulation and cultivation of students’ communicative willingness to enhance students’ communicative competence in English and comprehensive language competence.Most of previous researches mainly concern the trait-like or the state-like facet of WTC in English exclusively.There are few researches that focus on both situational and individual factors affecting WTC.English teaching and communication is mainly conducted in EFL classroom for Chinese students.However,teachers in China are constantly confused by students’ unwillingness to communicate in English in the English classroom.To understand this phenomenon,the current study,based on the theoretical model of WTC,through questionnaire,combined with semi-structured interviews,examines WTC in English among 421 students from Jing Zhong Middle School in Guang Zhou and explores the following two questions.1.What is the present situation of students’ willingness to communicate in English classroom in junior high schools?2.What are the possible factors affecting junior high school students’ WTC in English,and to what extent these factors affect WTC in English?Specifically,descriptive analysis and independent-sample T Test were employed to describe the general picture of junior high school students’ WTC in English and to identify whether there were any differences in WTC in English between two genders.Meanwhile,exploratory factor analysis,correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were conducted to examine the factors that potentially influence WTC in English and their influences on WTC in English.The results show that junior high school students generally display a moderate level of WTC in English,which is not optimistic.Specifically,they prefer to communicate in communicative activities that are less cognitively demanding and more interesting,like reading dialogue with partners and taking part in English games organized by the teacher for the whole class.In addition,compared with communicating with teachers,participants are more willing to communicate with their peers.Furthermore,it is found that female students are more active in English communication in class in contrast with male students.As for factors influencing WTC in English,the present study finds that factors influencing WTC in English include individual variables and situational variables,the former covers self-perceived communicative competence,motivation and communication anxiety while the latter includes teacher factor and peer relationship.With regard to the extent to which these factors affect WTC in English,it is concluded that self-perceived communication is the most significant factor that influences WTC in English,followed by motivation,teacher factor,peer relationship and communicative anxiety.Except communicative anxiety,all other four factors are significantly and positively correlated with WTC in English.Finally,pedagogical implications are drawn from this study and suggestions for future study are provided.