The Influence of Willingness to Communicate on Overall Speaking Skills among EFL Learners

Abstract

Due to the popularity of foreign language learning (FLL) and using the language meaningfully, the pedagogy of language learning has recently regarded the importance of willingness to communicate (WTC) in second and FLL and communication. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the Turkish preparatory class students' WTC levels and the effects of individual differences on their WTC levels. 73 students, who are studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in the preparatory class in the foreign language department in Amasya University, serve as the participants of the study. The scale prepared by McCroskey (1992) is utilized to measure the students' WTC and some demographic information of students are gathered to make contributions to the relationship between their WTC and the other demographic variables such as proficiency level, length of studying, being abroad, and communicating with foreigners. Moreover, the students' WTC levels are related to their overall speaking skills defined by a 5 point likert-type scale ranged from "1= weak", "2=adequate", "3=good", "4=excellent" and "5=No idea because I didn't do such an activity.", filled by the speaking course instructors. In the statistical procedure, a series of independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVAs were applied to provide the answers to the related research questions. The results show that preparatory class students have mostly weak and adequate overall speaking skills which can be related with the activities the instructors and the curriculum include for the course content or the ability of instructors' material adaptation. The importance of the present study lies in its theoretical contributions to the WTC research and the pedagogical implications for both teaching and learning process in EFL context. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.