Communication confidence and listening competence: An investigation of the relationships of willingness to communicate, communication apprehension, and receiver apprehension to comprehension of content and emotional meaning in spoken messages

Abstract

For many years teachers have assumed that confidence is an aid to effective communication. This study investigated whether or not self‐confidence, expressed both as willingness to communicate and a lack of anxiety, is really a valid indicator of overall competence in listening. Listening is a complex activity and consists of the comprehension of content, as well as understanding the emotional or paralanguage aspects of spoken messages.

One hundred and one students responded to Willingness to Communicate, Communication Apprehension, and Receiver Apprehension scales and were evaluated on comprehension and paralanguage parts of both the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Test and the Watson‐Barker Listening Test. In general, and considering specific gender differences, results showed that there is a positive relationship between communication confidence and listening comprehension, but that a student's ability to decipher emotional content in messages tends to be inversely related to his/her expressed confidence.