Communication in the Second Language: Investigating the Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Learners’Beliefs and Attitudes

Individual differences play a dramatic role on individuals’ language attainment and proficiency (Dornyei, 2005) and one of the most important individual differencesrelated to communication in bilingual contexts is Willingness to communicate (WTC) (Baker & MacIntyre, 2000: McCroskey & Richmond, 1991).This paper reports on a study which investigated the relationship between WTC and language learning beliefs and attitudes among Iranian EFL learners. Participants of the study were 118 Iranian male students who were studying English at Iran Language Institute during 2011-2012 academic year. Three questionnaires of Willingness to Communicate (McCroskey,1982), Self-Perceived Communication Competence (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1988) and Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (McCroskey, 1982) were utilized for measuring communication-related variables, and Horwtiz’s (1985) Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) and Foreign Language Attitude Survey (FLAS)by De Garcia, Reynolds, and Savignon (1976) were used for investigating different aspects of learners’ beliefs and attitudes toward language learning. The results showed that WTC and perceived communication competence were correlated with beliefs about the difficulty of language learning and foreign language aptitude, respectively. Communication apprehension had a negative correlation with instructional strategies for developing oral skills. The finding indicated a directional relationship between communication traits and beliefs and attitudes toward the second language learning. This paper discusses the reasons for such findings and presents some implication for generating WTC among learners

Keywords:

Second language communication , Willingness to communicate , learner beliefs , Attitudes , language learning. Bilingual’s communication