Facilitating EFL Learners’ Willingness to Communicate: The Effect of Using Animation and Input Flooding

Extensive research has been conducted for English learners to find factors influencing willingness to communicate, but there is a little result of enhancing WTC. This study examined whether giving young learners lots of sample sentences and playing them related animations could have a positive impact on their willingness to communicate. A quasi-experimental pre- and post-test control group design were used to fulfill the research aim. Two intact classes of Grade tenth Iranian learners participated. The participants were 42 female students from a public school in Iran. Classes randomly were selected as control and treatment group. The instruction was conducted during five weeks. In order to collect data, Willingness to communicate questionnaire [1] and semi-structured interview was used. Independent sample t-test and Paired sample t-test were employed to analyze data. A comparison of willingness to communicate scores of the experimental and control group showed that the use of animations and giving students sample sentences, which are taken out from animations contributed to a significant promotion in learners’ WTC. The results showed that learners’ WTC scores were successfully increased over five weeks of implementation. This implementation was successful in enhancing learners’ confidence and motivation. Qualitative data also showed that learners showed interest to this method. This method is particularly useful for beginner EFL learners with a low level of confidence and little exposure to English.

Keywords:

willingness to communicate , EFL , L2WTC , input flooding