Abstract
The present study examined the relationship between willingness to communicate (WTC) in English as second language (L2) and Japanese as third language (L3), and explored how some Japanese context-specific variables relate to WTC. The participants were 103 international students in Japan. Statistical analysis confirmed the hypothesis of a mutual negative relation between WTC in English and WTC in Japanese. That means that students who are more willing to communicate in English tend to be less willing to communicate in Japanese, and vice versa. An analysis of Japanese context variables and WTC discovered significant correlations. However, structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed a significant regression weight not from Japanese contexts to WTC as we hypothesized, but in the opposite direction. Japanese context variables seem to be not the antecedents but consequences of WTC. The implications of those findings are further discussed.
