Investigating the dynamics of change in second language willingness to communicate

Abstract

For years, researchers have viewed willingness  to communicate (WTC) as a personality-based, trait-like tendency and employed quantitative measures, seemingly overlooking the WTC changes during communications. A new line of inquiry, however, has taken a dynamic approach to investigating the WTC changes and the factors triggering them during communications. The present mixed-methods study incorporated an idiodynamic method with 20 Farsi-speaking English as a Second Language participants who performed three-minute speaking tasks, rated their WTC changes, and attended stimulated recall interviews. A between-subjects repeated measures analysis of variance showed a statistically significant difference in the participants’ WTC from task to task. The WTC variation patterns were also clustered into seven categories that visualized the dynamics of WTC changes. In vivo coding of the stimulated recall interviews produced seven different categories of factors including possession of supporting ideas, individual, contextual, organizational, lexis-related, and grammar-related factors as well as the participants’ perceptions of their performance.