An Empirical Study of Senior High School Students’ Willingness to Communicate in English in the Chinese Context

Abstract

Willingness to communicate (WTC), which means to communicate with others using a certain kind of language, has been an important concept in explaining the first and second language communication. In order to have a deep understanding of the situation of senior high school students’ WTC in English, we made an empirical research on it. In the present study, the quantitative method and interview will be used and 304 participants are from two senior high schools in Jilin Province. From the study results, it can be seen that: Generally, senior high school students have a lower level of willingness to communicate. On the other hand, senior high school students are experiencing a high level of English classroom anxiety, which can have a significant negative influence on students’ WTC. Based on the results of this research, some feasible suggestions for schools, English teachers, students and parents are proposed.