Investigating the dynamic nature of L2 willingness to communicate

The complex nature of willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language (L2) manifests itself in its diverse conceptualizations, ranging from a personality trait to a context-related feature. The significance of the concept lies in the fact that it integrates psychological, linguistic, educational, and communicative dimensions of language that traditionally have been investigated separately. Recently, a dynamic character of WTC has been recognized and it has been shown that one's willingness to speak may fluctuate during one communicative event The study reported in this paper aimed to investigate changes in learners' willingness to speak in the course of a conversation about upbringing, performed in pairs, and to identify factors responsible for such changes. The participants were 8 Polish majors enrolled in a three-year Bachelor of Arts program and the data were collected by means of self-ratings, questionnaires and interviews. The analysis showed that the participants' WTC was indeed in a state of flux, being influenced by such variables as the topic, planning time, cooperation and familiarity with the interlocutor, the opportunity to express one's ideas, the mastery of requisite lexis, the presence of the researcher, and a host of individual variables. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

第二语言（L2）交际意愿（WTC）的复杂性质体现在其多样的概念化中，从一种人格特质到与语境相关的特征不等。这一概念的重要性在于它整合了语言的心理、语言、教育和交际维度，而这些维度传统上是分别进行研究的。最近，交际意愿的动态特征已得到认可，并且表明一个人在一次交际活动中的说话意愿可能会波动。本文所报告的研究旨在调查学习者在关于教养的成对对话过程中说话意愿的变化，并确定导致这种变化的因素。参与者是8名攻读三年制文学学士学位课程的波兰语专业学生，数据通过自我评估、问卷调查和访谈的方式收集。分析表明，参与者的交际意愿确实处于变动状态，受到诸如话题、准备时间、合作以及对对话者的熟悉程度、表达自己想法的机会、对必要词汇的掌握、研究者的在场以及许多个体变量等变量的影响。© 2015爱思唯尔有限公司。保留所有权利。