The Willingness to Communicate in English During Online Learning among Tertiary EFL Learner in Wuyishan City, China

Abstract

To create willingness to communicate (WTC) is considered as the ultimate goal of second or foreign language education (MacIntyre et al., 1998). Many previous studies explored the relationship between WTC and different variables in physical class. However, scant researches focus on the WTC under online class situation. This research aims to find out the Chinese tertiary learners’ WTC during online English class, and predict the influencing factors and correlated variables. This quantitative study mainly uses a quantitative method composed of a survey with questionnaires and a semi-structured interview. The survey involves 104 participants, and of which 13 participants are engaged in the semi-structured interview 13 participants. The results shows that tertiary learners’ WTC in English online class is comparatively high, and the WTC of females was slightly higher than that of males while older students had a slightly higher WTC. Furthermore, students of high English proficiency had higher levels of WTC than those of low proficiency. Last, the correlation between Dyad and the willingness to communicate was the strongest. Students tend to communicate more in dyad. Besides, acquaintance had the strongest correlation with WTC. Learners are more willing to talk with acquaintances than with teachers. This study is a preliminary investigation on online class WTC, future research may try qualitative or mixed method to explore WTC in reading, writing, and listening.