29.2594, Review: English; Polish; Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition: Mystkowska-Wiertelak, Pawlak (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-2594. Tue Jun 19 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.2594, Review: English; Polish; Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition: Mystkowska-Wiertelak, Pawlak (2017)

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Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2018 11:18:36
From: Anita Thomas [anita.thomas at unifr.ch]
Subject: Willingness to Communicate in Instructed Second Language Acquisition

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-1293.html

AUTHOR: Anna  Mystkowska-Wiertelak
AUTHOR: Mirosław  Pawlak
TITLE: Willingness to Communicate in Instructed Second Language Acquisition
SUBTITLE: Combining a Macro- and Micro-Perspective
SERIES TITLE: Second Language Acquisition
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Anita Thomas, Université de Fribourg

Book review of 

Mystkowska-Wiertelak, A., & Pawlak, M. (2017). Willingness to Communicate in
Instructed Second Language Acquisition: Combining a Macro- and
Micro-Perspective: Multilingual Matters.

SUMMARY

“Willingness to Communicate in Instructed Second Language Acquisition” is a
monograph in three parts. After a short Introduction, the first part offers a
comprehensive overview of theoretical, methodological and empirical issues
about Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in a Second Language (L2). The second
and the third parts present two different studies: the first one investigates
WTC from a macro-perspective, in which WTC is examined with two versions of a
large online questionnaire and the second one examines WTC from a
micro-perspective with WTC ratings from the learners during speaking classes. 

The book starts with an introduction in which the motivations for studying WTC
are presented in a detailed and dynamic way. WTC is “defined as ‘the
probability of initiating communication, given choice and opportunity’
(MacIntyre, 2007: 567).” (page x). It could be central to the development of a
new language as it has an impact on the number of opportunities for
interaction and output the learner will have. The question is what influences
WTC. Is it related to personality traits, the socio-ethnic context or does it
depend on factors such as task, mood and the immediate context in general? The
aim of the book is “to fill the existing gap by offering a comprehensive
account of the influences on L2 WTC in the Polish educational context” (page
xvi). It is based on data from Polish advanced learners of English as a
foreign language enrolled in bachelor or master programs at university level.

Part 1 consists of 3 chapters that present the concept of WTC (Chapter 1), the
methodologies used in earlier studies (Chapter 2) and the factors that have
been examined in earlier studies (Chapter 3).

Chapter 1 is a brief chapter that introduces the different components
underlying WTC, in first and second language acquisition. The work of McIntyre
and especially his pyramid model (McIntyre et al. 1998) are presented in more
details. This model includes six layers of “trait-like and situation-based
characteristics” (page 9) such as “behavioral intention” (Layer II, page 6),
motivational” propensities (Layer IV, page 7) or “social and individual
context” (Layer VI, page 8). McIntyre’s pyramid model has been revised by
several researchers, especially those working on Chinese learners. These
studies reveal the crucial importance of the societal context for WTC, showing
important differences between desire to communicate, which implies a
preference, and WTC, that requires the learner to take action (page 9-10).

Chapter 2 presents a literature overview that focuses on methodological issues
including very recent studies (2016). The studies are divided into two
categories, first the quantitative and then the qualitative ones. Around 15
studies are briefly presented for each methodology revealing the variety of
measures as well as the difficulty to really measure WTC (see in particular
Peng 2014, page 96).

Chapter 3 presents a range of adjacent issues and how they relate to WTC.
Several concepts are presented: self-perceived communicative competence and
anxiety, motivation, age and gender, personality and finally contextual
factors with social and contextual variables (support, familiarity, error
correction, teacher characteristics, etc.) as well as cognitive, linguistic
and affective factors (meaningful interactions, lexical resources, level of
extroversion, etc.). The most important conclusion drawn from this overview is
that WTC “largely depends on the context and situation” (page 66).

Part two presents the first study by the authors, one that investigates WTC
from a macro-perspective. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 respectively present the design,
the findings and a discussion. The aim of this first study was twofold.
Firstly, it was to “design and validate a tool that would be well-suited to
the study of WTC” and secondly to shed “light on different facets of WTC”
(page 73). The design was inspired by the pyramid model developed by MacIntyre
et al (1998) (see above) and was conducted in two rounds, with 107 university
students in the first round and 614 in the second one. The second aim of the
study was to learn more about different aspects of WTC with data from advanced
Polish learners of English.

In the first round the questionnaire consisted of 105 Likert-scale items. The
items were taken from different earlier studies and translated into Polish.
Some items were adjusted to the Polish educational context; all were
formulated as positive assertions. The different items addressed the following
nine dimensions (clusters) of WTC: WTC outside the classroom, WTC during a
speaking class, communication confidence, learner beliefs, classroom
environment, international posture, ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self and
integrativeness. All the questions are listed in the Appendix, which clearly
facilitates replication studies. The questionnaire was administered online.
The different statistical procedures that were conducted to analyze the
answers are described on pages 85-86. They finally aimed at establishing
internal reliability consistency of clusters of variables. This analysis
resulted in excluding 16 items (listed on page 90) for the second round, which
then consisted of 89 six-point Likert-scale items. 

The results of these quantitative macro studies showed that the aspect of
integrativeness had the least influence on WTC, leaving a model with eight
factors contributing to WTC. Those factors all correlate with each other,
“communication confidence” correlating with many factors and “ought-to self”
with only a few. The results are discussed in an interesting way in Chapter 6
and lead to a “hypothesized model of willingness to communicate as a predictor
of L2 communication,” which illustrates the network of correlations underlying
the concept of WTC according to the two quantitative studies (Figure 6.1 on
page 108). 

The results indicated that the students’ level of WTC is rather moderate (page
110). They also showed that unplanned in-class WTC as well as practice-seeking
WTC “correlate strongly with communication confidence” (page 114). In my view,
these results are very interesting and should be communicated to language
teachers.

Part three finally presents the study that takes a micro-perspective and is
seen as complementary to the two quantitative studies. Chapter 7 introduces
the study design which consists of comprehensive classroom-oriented research
in which the students’ WTC during regularly speaking classes is documented.
The overall aim of the study was “to pinpoint the individual and contextual
variables responsible for the increases and decreases in students’ readiness
to engage in communication [during the targeted classes]” (page 123). The
study included 48 Polish university students aged around 20 years, who had
about 12 years of exposure to English and had reached a B1-B2 proficiency
level. The participants were attending English language courses in three
different groups. During the classes in which the data were collected, the
participants “self-rated their readiness to make a contribution to ongoing
interaction at preset time intervals” (p 129). They had to fill in a grid
(reproduced in English in the Appendix) every five minutes after a prerecorded
beep. The participants had also to answer questionnaires towards the end of
the class. Finally, the three teachers provided the researcher team with their
in-depth lesson plans, which allowed for comparison between the learners’
responses and the classroom activity at that time.

Chapter 8 presents the findings of the study. The results are presented with
tables and graphs in a reader friendly and meticulous manner. They show the
results for each group a) for variation in WTC over time within the whole
group, b) for variation over time within individuals and c) for the factors
impacting WTC according to the participants. All in all, the results showed
that “WTC levels change considerably during the speaking classes” and “also
that the patterns of these changes could vary dramatically as a function of a
wide array of individual and contextual variables.” (page 168).

Chapter 9 consists of a discussion of the findings from the second study. The
main findings are again summarized in very clear figures and tables. For
example Table 9.1 (page 175-176) summarizes “the observed and potential impact
of different factors on participants’ WTC levels” ranked from the strongest
(stage of the class, task-related variables) to the weakest factors (overall
educational context, level in the programme). The results “clearly demonstrate
that having an opportunity to interact with other students in dyads or small
groups enhances readiness to speak” while “whole-class interaction […]
appeared to exert a detrimental effect on WTC levels as it coincided in most
cases with greater or smaller decreases in readiness to speak.” (page 177).
The chapter ends with a longer section about the study’s limitations and
appeals to more studies into WTC adopting a micro perspective. 

The book’s last chapter consists of a short conclusive chapter in which the
authors underline the necessity for more studies before drawing specific and
reliable conclusions and formulating pedagogical implications. Although this
very careful position is admirable from a scientific point of view, it is
frustrating for the reader with teacher training or classroom practice
expectations.

EVALUATION

It was a real pleasure to read this book. It is written in a clear and
reader-friendly manner. The text, the tables and the figures make it easy to
follow the author’s reasoning around WTC and the two studies conducted. The
structure of the book, with an introductory part, the presentation of the
macro and then the micro study seems logical. From my experience as a language
teacher as well as form my research, I know that WTC is a crucial issue in
second language learning. To examine WTC both on the level of a general
attitude as in the macro study and then on the micro level during the
classroom gives important insights into what motivates learners’ WTC. It is
interesting to observe the variation in WTC during a series of classroom
activities, a result that contradicts the idea that WTC is a stable
personality trait. Given the important didactic implications of the two
studies it would have been interesting to have a last general chapter where
the results of the two studies are put in relation to each other. Such a
chapter could have been especially interesting for language teachers who don’t
want to deal with methodological details or statistics. The absence of such a
chapter, in which some of the questions raised in the introductory part could
have been discussed in the light of the two studies, gives an impression of
unfinished work. Especially it would have been interesting to have the
authors’ view on the issue of personality trait versus immediate context that
was so strongly put forward at the beginning of the book. This is however the
only negative comment I have on the book. I hope that the authors will
continue their high-quality research and include learners with different
levels of proficiency and that researchers will make use of the material
reproduced in the Appendix for studies in other contexts and with different
target languages.

REFERENCES

MacIntyre, P. D. (2007). Willingness to communicate in the second language:
Understanding the decision to speak as a volitional process. Modern Language
Journal, 91. 564-576.

MacIntyre, P. D., Dörnyei, Z., Clément, R., & Noels, K. A. (1998).
Conceptualizing Willingness to Communicate in a L2: A Situational Model of L2
Confidence and Affiliation. The Modern Language Journal 82(4). 545-562. 

Peng J.E. (2014). Willingness to communicate inside the EFL classroom: An
ecological perspective. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Anita Thomas is an Associate Professor of French as a foreign language at the
Department of Multilingualism and Didactics of Modern Languages at University
of Fribourg/Freiburg, Switzerland. Her main research interests include second
language development with focus on the influence of input, structural priming,
usage-based approaches, and the development of French verb morphology at
different ages.





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