Relationship Among Willingness to Communicate, Accuracy, Fluency, and Complexity of Utterances in Japanese EFL Learners

抄録

This study examined the relationship between the fluctuating state of willingness to communicate (WTC)of Japanese EFL learners and the quality of their utterances. Interactive communicative activities between an interlocutor and two low-intermediate and two advanced Japanese university EFL speakers were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The findings indicated that levels of self-rated state WTC did not have a significant effect on linguistic quality measured in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). However, a closer analysis of the data on learners’ English proficiency implied that the accuracy of the utterances of low-intermediate speakers, and the fluency of advanced speakers may be correlated with WTC. One possible pedagogical implication is that EFL teachers may have to consider a different relationship between WTC and the linguistic quality of learner utterances, according to their language proficiency, while paying more attention to linguistic accuracy in teaching lower-level learners.