초등 영어학습자의 의사소통의지에 관한 연구

Willingness to communicate among primary school learners of english

  The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors involved in situations in which Korean primary school students learning English have adequate communicative competence and motivation but still low willingness to communicate (WTC), and to make some suggestions about how to raise WTC which directly affects communication. Six primary school students from 11 to 13 years old participated in the study and their perceived communicative competence, foreign language anxiety and willingness to communicate were examined through project storytelling and drawing task, interviews, and simulation of a communicative situation. The results showed that the learners" perceived competence did not necessarily result in high willingness to communicate in an actual communication situation and their actual willingness to communicate was highly influenced by the interaction of anxiety and perceived communicative competence in a given situation. The findings of the study refute the assumption that second language learners" motivation naturally leads to willingness to communicate and has direct correlation with frequency of communication. It is suggested that the level of learners" WTC is closely related with different situations where learners experience different levels of communication anxiety and perceived competence.