An investigation of students’ perception on willingness to communicate behavior and synchronous communication

Abstract

In English as a target language (TL) learning environment, it always takes effort to encourage learners to open and engage in a conversation for English communication practice. Moreover, the shorts of communication practice might be influencing their perceptions which are corresponding to a variety of willingness to communicate (WTC) behaviors. On the other hand, a mode of engaging synchronous communication (SC) to facilitate English as a TL communication has been positively addressed. As a result, the current study attempts to investigate what features of WTC behaviors would influence English learners’ WTC, and whether an engagement of SC would influence to their WTC respectively. The participants were the first year non-English majored college students. Questionnaires with open-ended questions were applied to gather the data. The results showed learners’ perceptions on several WTC behaviors were ranked much higher than those were lower. The modes of SCs positively associated with learner’s WTC accordingly.