EFL students’ views of willingness to communicate in the extramural digital context

Abstract

This study examined factors that might have affected EFL learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in the extramural digital (ED) environment, a rapidly emerging L2 communication context. The investigator conducted a semi-structured interview with 98 EFL students from three Korean universities. Drawing on grounded theory, socio-political (Korea’s K-12 instruction), contextual (familiarity with interlocutors and communities), and individual variables (L2 self-confidence and anxiety) emerged as major sources of influence on participants’ L2 WTC. Additionally, these sub-variables appeared to interact simultaneously during L2 communication in the ED context. This study contributes to further advancing our understanding of L2 WTC in a CALL environment. It also offers pedagogical insights into how L2 teachers can facilitate EFL learners’ WTC in a range of extramural digital environments where their L2 WTC is very different from face-to-face classroom and extracurricular digital settings.

Keywords:

• Extramural digital context
• willingness to communicate
• learner perceptions

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions to improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Availability of data

Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions.

Notes

1 Affinity space is ‘where people affiliate with others based primarily on shared activities, interests, and goals, not shared race, class culture, ethnicity, or gender’ (Gee, 2004, p. 67).

2 Social anxiety can be understood as enormous fear of nervousness or embarrassment in social situations (Leary & Kowalski, 1995).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ju Seong Lee

Ju Seong Lee received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018. From December 2018, he will work as an Assistant Professor at Education University of Hong Kong. His research interests include informal digital learning of English, communication behaviors, affect in second language learning, and English as an international language.