Exploring reasons behind EFL students' unwillingness to communicate in the classroom

Abstract

English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ willingness to communicate in the foreign language (FL) is indispensable in attaining their language learning objectives. Willingness to communicate (WTC) is a concept which assimilates linguistic, communicative, and psychological variables to explain foreign or second language (FL/SL) communication. Nonetheless, most teachers nowadays complain about students’ unwillingness to speak English in FL classroom sessions. Students may show a good performance in skills such as reading, listening, and writing, but when it comes to speaking, they become passive or unwilling to speak in the classroom because of psychological, linguistic or maybe other affective barriers. Thus, the current study aims to explore the factors that detriment students’ WTC in the classroom following an exploratory design. The population of this research consists of third year LMD students at the department of English, University of Bejaia. The sample of the study is composed of fifty students and five teachers enrolled in the same department. To attain our study aims and to find answers to the research questions, we relied on a quantitative method to collect data, and a mixed method comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the collected data. The data was gathered through two instruments: a questionnaire directed to students in addition to another one distributed to teachers. The results obtained from the data analysis revealed that the major hindering factors that block students from classroom communication are shyness, stress, fear of making mistakes, lack of vocabulary in addition to lack of language proficiency, anxiety and lack of motivation. Overall, the results of the study answered our research questions and the objectives behind this investigation are fulfilled. Lastly, helpful techniques and strategies are suggested on how third year students’ willingness to communicate in the classroom can be boosted