Vocabulary size as a predictor of willingness to communicate inside the classroom

Abstract

Recent developments in the field of foreign language education have led to a renewed interest in willingness to communicate in English (L2 WTC) and the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between learners’ vocabulary size and L2 WTC inside the classroom in English as a foreign language (EFL) setting. Participants were 100 university students majoring in an EFL teacher education program at a state university in Ankara, Turkey. Data were collected by using Vocabulary Levels Test and Willingness to Communicate inside the Classroom Scale. Findings of descriptive statistics showed that 32% of the participants had high, 54% had moderate, and 14% had low levels of L2 WTC inside the classroom. Findings also revealed a significant relationship between vocabulary level of the participants and their L2 WTC inside the classroom. The implications are offered to provide insight to language teachers, pre-service language teachers, curriculum designers and teacher trainers to create awareness on the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and willingness to communicate.