Turkish EFL Learners' Willingness to Communicate in English

Year 2018, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 40 - 49, 30.06.2018

Cennet Altıner

Abstract

Willingness to communicate in a second language has gained
importance recently with the increasing popularity of communicate language
teaching. However, different factors which influence learners' willingness to
communicate have not been widely investigated in the Turkish classroom context.
Thus, this study will investigate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners'
willingness to communicate (WTC) in Turkish EFL context and its interaction
with different factors such as gender, proficiency levels. 711 preparatory
school students at a state university in Turkey participated in this
study. For data collection, willingness to communicate scale adapted from Peng and Woodrow (2010) was utilized investigate Turkish
preparatory students' willingness to communicate in English. Firstly, descriptive analysis of the questionnaire was carried out through Statistical Package for Social Sciences
(SPSS). Then, independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA  were conducted
to investigate the effects of  gender and
language proficiency variables on learners' willingness to communicate. The
results of the study indicated that the students in this study were moderately
willing to communicate in English. It was found that
students were more willing to communicate in controlled situations compared to
more meaning-focused situations. With regard to the effect of
gender on Turkish EFL learners' WTC, it was found that female EFL learners are
more willing to communicate in English in the classroom compared to male EFL
students. Lastly, learners who have higher language proficiency levels
were found to have higher WTC level compared to learners who have lower
language proficiency levels.

Keywords

Willingness to communicate, EFL learners, gender, proficiency level

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