ALIS Newsletter - February 2021 (Plain Text Version)

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In this issue:
LEADERSHIP UPDATES
•  LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
•  LETTER FROM THE CHAIRS
•  LETTER FROM THE CHAIR-ELECT
ARTICLES
•  BUILDING POSITIVE OUTCOMES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: A CASE FOR FOCUSING ON POSITIVE INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
•  A SELF-REFLECTION APPROACH TO BOLSTERING MOTIVATION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
•  THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF BUILDING GRIT IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
•  BUILDING WILLINGNESS-TO-COMMUNICATE IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
ABOUT THIS COMMUNITY
•  APPLIED LINGUISTICS INTEREST SECTION (ALIS)

BUILDING WILLINGNESS-TO-COMMUNICATE IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Joanne Koh, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Willingness to Communicate (WTC) is an individual difference factor that characterizes language learners’ “readiness to enter into a discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using the second language” (MacIntyre et al., 1998, cited in Yashima et al., 2018, p. 116). This behavioral intention to initiate and continue to participate in communication when opportunity arises is argued to largely contribute to facilitating second or foreign language (L2) development as learners must use a language to acquire it (Yashima et al., 2018).

As the definition alludes, WTC embodies both individual learners’ enduring general communicative tendency, which is WTC as a trait (e.g., Jo is shy; Tom is not) and their situation-specific, moment-by-moment changing communicative behavior, which is WTC as a state (e.g., Jo may only be shy with certain people, and not with others) (Zhang et al., 2018). Recently, researchers have switched their focus to WTC as a state and have identified significant factors that give rise to L2 students’ readiness for communication engagement. Viewing WTC as a relatively malleable state is good news for teachers because it means teachers can encourage and support students’ group-work participation, and hence increase their opportunities to learn, and they can do this best by forming a WTC-friendly classroom context.

Among different variables that interact to fluctuate learners’ L2 WTC, two are critical: students’ orientation toward working in the group that they find themselves in and their perceptions toward the specific task that the group must undertake. In this piece, I discuss both of these variables. Initially, I present ways that teachers can evaluate their students’ willingness to engage with certain groups and groups in general. I then discuss how teachers can gather information on which tasks that they use best promote WTC so that teachers can iteratively design or select the best tasks for their classroom over time.

The Capacity of Group Work in Promoting L2 WTC

1. Place Students Into Small Groups

As part of a communicative, task-based instructional program, teachers are recommended to pair or arrange students into smaller groups for everyday classroom work and to have the students use the language for meaningful communication. Whole class activities are less likely to enhance students’ direct communication skills because they reduce class cohesiveness and students’ chances to have close contacts with other students (Zhang et al., 2018). Speaking up within a whole-class activity may also provoke anxiety due to perceived peer scrutiny. Hence, small group work can better promote WTC by offering students more chances to speak and develop communicative practices (Zhang et al., 2018).

2. Consider Students’ Collective Orientation

When placing students into small groups, teachers are encouraged to consider students’ collective orientation: their propensity to work in a collective manner in group settings (Driskell et al., 2010). The extent to which learners prefer to work cooperatively within a group has been suggested to impact other group members’ engagement in communication (Zhang et al., 2018) as well as task success (Alavi & McCormick, 2018; Driskell et al., 2010). Thus, at the beginning of the semester and before arranging students into groups, teachers can identify students’ collective orientation by conducting a survey using the following items that I have adapted from Driskell et al. (2010, p. 320).

Figure 1: Sample of students’ collective orientation survey items.

Teachers should note that not all group members need high collective orientation. Researchers have suggested a group composed exclusively of highly collective-oriented members can actually decrease students’ participation as the students may be reluctant to offer alternative viewpoints (Driskell et al., 2010). Given this, teachers are encouraged to arrange a group that is composed of neither too many highly dependent nor independent members based on individual students’ collective orientations.

The Potential of Tasks in Promoting L2 WTC

1. Design and Select Tasks that Promote Interaction

To stretch the value of group work, teachers should be careful in designing and selecting tasks that guarantee every group member’s participation. Foremost, teachers are recommended to take into account the degree of task interdependence, that is, the extent to which the task induces students to interact and coordinate with team members (Alavi & McCormick, 2018; Driskell et al., 2010). The following questions that I adapted from Alavi and McCormick (2018) can possibly support teachers in choosing appropriate tasks:

• At the start, does the task have various students each receive (or seek to obtain) different pieces of accurate information, with each piece being important for task completion?
• Is the amount of work needed to complete the task able to be fairly divided across group members, thus requiring students to exchange information rather equally?
• Does the task require students to consult with other group members fairly frequently?
• Does successful task performance require students to reach a manageable number of finite solutions?
• Does the task conclude with something tangible that I, as the teacher, can evaluate as evidence of task completion ability and that the students can use to self-evaluate their own performance or evaluate the contributions of their peers who were in their group?

After embracing the above qualities, problem-solving tasks are further recommended (Alavi & McCormick, 2018; Driskell et al., 2010) because they require a multi-way interaction among students to reach plausible solutions. Likewise, when a task has multiple pathways to success and even different ways to conclude, students have more opportunities to speak. Choice during task completion also spurs interest and motivation to succeed.

2. Consider Students’ Perceptions of the Task

Teachers around the world understand that students’ perceptions toward a specific task will impact the group members’ communication engagement, and researchers (e.g., Zhang et al., 2018) have shown why. In particular, the more students perceive the task to be interesting and useful, the more they are to be engaged in conversation during the task (Zhang et al., 2018). Hence, before selecting tasks, teachers should gather students’ opinions on the topics they find intriguing to share in group settings. It is also encouraging for teachers to ask students about the tasks they find useful to complete with other group members, such as tasks that support them in maintaining interpersonal relationships or that help them gain personal benefits (Peng & Woodrow, 2010; Zhang et al., 2018). As students’ perceptions are subject to change as the task itself progresses, teachers are encouraged to visit groups regularly during task performance, not only to provide timely responses to questions raised in the groups, but also to solicit opinions from the students on the task itself.

Teachers are also strongly recommended to elicit students’ task perceptions upon completion of the task. The post-task survey in Figure 2 is beneficial as teachers can glean insights from students quickly and turn those insights into action by making changes to the implemented task for better future use, or by culling tasks that turn out to be less engaging than others. The questions in Figure 2 were adapted by me from Peng and Woodrow (2010, p. 869), and readers can adapt them further for their own classroom use.

Figure 2: Sample of students’ task perceptions survey items.

Note. The emojis were downloaded here. 

Conclusion

Promoting L2 students’ communication engagement requires teachers to be conscious of the potential of group work and the tasks that are to be used. As teachers arrange students into groups and utilize tasks, they should be mindful of the influence of students’ collective orientation on task performance and be responsive to students’ perceptions toward the tasks. Taking advantage of the above survey items and questionnaires, teachers can arrange groups and select tasks that better promote learners’ readiness to engage in classroom conversation. Bearing in mind the situation-sensitive nature of WTC and the potential caveats of the above variables, teachers can greatly contribute to building students’ L2 WTC, which will only further facilitate their L2 development.

References

Alavi, S. B., & McCormick, J. (2018). Why do I think my team is capable? A study of some antecedents of team members’ personal collective efficacy beliefs. Educational Psychology, 38(9), 1147-1162. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1500680

Driskell, J. E., Salas E., & Hughes, S. (2010). Collective orientation and team performance: Development of an individual differences measure. Human Factors, 52(2), 316-328. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018720809359522

Peng, J-E., & Woodrow, L. (2010). Willingness to communicate in English: A model in the Chinese EFL classroom context. Language Learning, 60(4), 834-876. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00576.x

Yashima, T., MacIntyre, P. D., & Ikeda, M. (2018). Situated willingness to communicate in an L2: Interplay of individual characteristics and context. Language Teaching Research, 22(1), 115-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168816657851

Zhang, J., Beckmann, N., & Beckmann, J. F. (2018). To talk or not to talk: A review of situational antecedents of willingness to communicate in the second language classroom. System, 72, 226-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2018.01.003