Turkish EFL Learners' Willingness to Communicate in English

Willingness to communicate in a second language has gained importance recently with the increasing popularity of communicate language teaching. However, different factors which influence learners' willingness to communicate have not been widely investigated in the Turkish classroom context. Thus, this study investigated English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' willingness to communicate (WTC) in Turkish EFL context and its interaction with different factors such as gender, proficiency levels. 711 preparatory school students at a state university in Turkey participated in this study. For data collection, willingness to communicate scale adapted from Peng and Woodrow (2010) was utilized in order to investigate Turkish preparatory students' willingness to communicate in English. Firstly, descriptive analysis of the scale was carried out through Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Then, independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVA were conducted to investigate the effects of gender and language proficiency variables on learners' willingness to communicate. The results of the study indicated that the learners in this study were moderately willing to communicate in English. It was found that learners were more willing to communicate in controlled situations compared to more meaning-focused situations. With regard to the effect of gender on Turkish EFL learners' WTC, it was found that female EFL learners are more willing to communicate in English in the classroom compared to male EFL students. Lastly, learners who have higher language proficiency levels were found to have higher WTC level compared to learners who have lower language proficiency levels.