Willingness to communicate in english as a second language online classrooms: factors, influences, initiatives

• Main Author: Anna Lynn Abu Bakar
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: PE1001-1693 Modern English
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42540/1/24%20PAGES.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42540/2/FULLTEXT.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/42540/

The English language is seen as an important medium of communication amongst the community especially in higher institutions in Malaysia and also in the working world. Graduates are seen as having lack of communication skills in English, leading to unemployability upon graduation. Hence, a lot of effort has been put in to produce students who are competent in communicating effectively in different social and professional context. The Ministry of Education has made a lot of initiatives to improve students’ proficiency in English. This study looks into students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in a digital setting among pre-university students in a local university. Multimethods approach was employed in this study involving 321 participants. Self-administered questionnaire, 12 classroom observations and focus group interview involving 25 participants were used in this study. The information gleaned from the questionnaire was subjected to statistical analysis, the data gleaned from classroom observations were subjected to inter-rater reliability analysis, and the information gleaned from interviews was subjected to thematic analysis. The findings revealed that there is a significant relationship between motivation, self-confidence and language anxiety with students’ WTC. However, there is no significant relationship between grit and students’ WTC. The findings of the study also discovered that students’ WTC were very much influenced by their mood and the role of English language instructors’ (ELIs) in class. Among the significant themes that was discovered from the interview was students’ fear, environment and people which influence students’ WTC in English. However, in order to overcome these challenges, there are 6 main speaking initiatives that were employed by the students which are reading English books, listening to English songs, watching movies, writing, doing research from the internet and drilling. The findings of this study hope to shed some light to stakeholders, syllabus makers as well as ELIs on the factors that should be taken into consideration in the teaching and learning methods in order to ensure students’ WTC in English.