An Empirical Study of the Willingness to Communicate in College English Classes from an Ecological Perspective

Abstract

Drawing on an ecological perspective, this study investigated the link between classroom environment and willingness to communicate (WTC) in an EFL classroom. We applied a mixed methods approach to collect data from 389 Chinese students where a questionnaire was used before semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen participants. The results showed that there was a significant correlation between classroom dynamics and WTC in an EFL classroom. The qualitative data also showed the importance of the integrated individual, linguistic and environmental factors in shaping learners’ WTC in EFL classrooms. The in-depth findings of this inquiry suggest that language teachers should be mindful of the interdependence of all these involved factors that create students’ WTC in class.