The Relationship between WTC and Oral Proficiency Measurements in the Study Abroad Context

“Cultural differences are brought more to light when different cultures come together, particularly where interaction involves culturally diverse members, creating what has been called a culture of dialogue (Bakhtin, 1986).”

“Language and culture are inseparable, so orienting students towards a more sociolinguistic orientation of education is important (Canale & Swain, 1980).”

“E-mail: robson@toyo.jp Received: June 1, 2015 Accepted: July 3, 2015 Online Published: November 25, 2015 doi:10.5539/ies.v8n12p56 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ies.v8n12p56 Abstract Theories of second language acquisition such as the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996) and Pushed Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1995) empha…”

“One study by Yashima and Zenuk-Nishide (2008) looked at how International Posture, L2 WTC, and Frequency of Communication developed along with proficiency in English by comparing learners in both a study abroad context (for a period of 10 months) and an at home context.”

“It appears as though the Trade-off Hypothesis (Skehan, 2009) is evident in this data because two variables were related while the others are not on a particular activity.”

“A c-unit is defined as “independent utterance providing pragmatic meaning” (Foster & Skehan, 1996, p. 310).”

“Gass and Mackey (2000) claim that stimulated recall is a way of eliciting data about thought processes involved in carrying out the activity.”

“A similar result was found with beginning learners (MacIntyre & Charos, 1996) when measuring self-reported frequency of L2 use.”

“It has also been stated that complexity is the most difficult to measure of the three output production measurements (Housen & Kuiken, 2009).”

“Researchers have found that Chinese learners are often averse to speaking up in class and will remain reticent and non-participatory (Hu, 2002; Yu, 2001).”

“Task types have been found to improve accuracy (Skehan & Foster, 1999; Yuan & Ellis, 2003).”

“Researchers posit that a basic level of accuracy is needed in order to benefit from study abroad (Lara, 2014; Segalowitz & Freed, 2004).”

“Each of these types of WTC is different and should have its own research focus (MacIntyre, 2007).”

“Task types have been found to improve accuracy (Skehan & Foster, 1999; Yuan & Ellis, 2003).”

“In previous literature, SPCC has been found to predict WTC for trait measures, along with communication anxiety (Kim, 2004; Yashima, 2002; Yashima et al., 2004).”

“Originally conceived of in the L1 as a trait/personality construct (McCroskey & Baer, 1985), in the L2, WTC is affected by more situational factors (Fushino, 2008; Kang, 2005; Peng, 2012).”

“It was measured by number of turns and length of turns (Dörnyei & Kormos, 2000).”

“Variable measured by the number of words per c-unit (Mehnert, 1998), again averaged out to find the c-units length as a product of the total number of words.”

“Research into the psychological construct of Willingness to Communicate (WTC) has shown it to be both trait-like (McCroskey & Baer, 1985) and affected by more situational-based factors (Cao & Philp, 2006; Kang, 2005).”

“This means that students who have studied abroad tend to speak more smoothly and faster than those learners who only stay at home (Freed, 1995).”

“Comparing fluency to other output measures, less support for concrete changes in the study abroad context have been found for accuracy and complexity (Collentine, 2004; DeKeyser, 2010; Isabelli & Nishida, 2005).”

“Originally conceived of in the L1 as a trait/personality construct (McCroskey & Baer, 1985), in the L2, WTC is affected by more situational factors (Fushino, 2008; Kang, 2005; Peng, 2012).”

“Research at the situational and state level has addressed factors believed to impact on WTC. Elements found to affect WTC were group cohesiveness (Cao & Philp, 2006; De Saint Leger & Storch, 2009) as well as conversational context and topic (MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, & Noels, 1998).”

“Comparing fluency to other output measures, less support for concrete changes in the study abroad context have been found for accuracy and complexity (Collentine, 2004; DeKeyser, 2010; Isabelli & Nishida, 2005).”

“Through immersion in the second language setting, students are able to surround themselves with language opportunities that they might not find in their home countries (Freed, 1998).”

“Researchers have found that Chinese learners are often averse to speaking up in class and will remain reticent and non-participatory (Hu, 2002; Yu, 2001).”

“This was in line with other studies that have compared three production measures from the same participants over a period of time during study abroad courses (Mora & Valls-Ferrer, 2012; Perez-Vidal & Juan-Garau, 2009; Segalowitz & Freed, 2004).”

“Nobody learns a second language in a vacuum, so the accumulation of experiences and beliefs about learning language create certain learner expectations about the L2 culture (Savignon & Sysoyev, 2002).”

“Global errors were chosen over specific types of errors because of the considerable variability found even among native speakers of a language with certain structures (Geeslin & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2006).”

“This was in line with other studies that have compared three production measures from the same participants over a period of time during study abroad courses (Mora & Valls-Ferrer, 2012; Perez-Vidal & Juan-Garau, 2009; Segalowitz & Freed, 2004).”

“Variable measured by total words per minute (Pe´rez-Vidal & Juan-Garau, 2011).”

“In a study by Wolf (2013), the author used an argumentative essay as the basis for selecting topics for discussion.”

“…interact to produce L2 WTC. Studies of L2 WTC during SA have included correlational design (D’Amico, 2012; Gallagher 2013; Liu, 2017; Robson, 2015a; 2015b), pre-post-test SA impact (De Poli et al., 2018; Dewaele et al., 2015; D. M. Kang, 2014; Lee, 2018; Yashima & Zenuk-Nishide, 2008), and mixed…”

“In addition, Robson (2015) quantitatively analyzed 10-minute samples of student discussions, and Mortensen (2014) used quantized data, or the transformation of qualitative data to quantitative data (Bazeley and Kemp, 2012; Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009).”