Why do some students seek, while others avoid, second language (L2) communication? Many language teachers have encountered students high in linguistic competence who are unwilling to use their L2 for communication whereas other students, with only minimal linguistic knowledge, seem to communicate in the L2 whenever possible. Despite excellent communicative competence, spontaneous and sustained use of the L2 is not ensured. A colleague, who teaches a L2 and whose L2 competence is excellent, is well known to avoid "like the plague" L2 communication in social settings. A related observation is that many learners have noticed that their willingness to communicate (WTC) varies considerably over time and across situations. Our aim in this article is twofold. First we wish to provide an account of the linguistic, communicative, and social psychological variables that might affect one's "willingness to communicate." As demonstrated in the text below, and examination ofWTC offers the opportunity to integrate psychological, linguistic, and communicative approaches to L2 research that typically have been independent of each other. We view the WTC model as having the potential to provide a useful interface between these disparate lines of inquiry. Our second goal is to suggest potential relations among these variables by outlining a comprehensive conceptual model that may be useful in describing, explaining, and predicting L2 communication. In an effort to move beyond linguistic or communicative competence as the primary goal of language instruction, this article represents an overt attempt to combine these disparate approaches in a common theme, that is, proposing WTC as the primary goal of language instruction.Willingness to communicate (WTC), originally conceptualized with reference to first or native language (Ll) communication, was introduced to the communication literature by McCroskey and Baer (1985), building on the earlier work of Burgoon (1976) and others. McCroskey and Baer conceptualized WTC as the probability of engaging in communication when free to choose to do so. WTC reflects the stable predisposition to talk in various situations and is seen essentially as a personality trait. McCroskey and associates have shown that WTC is related to such attributes as communication apprehension, perceived communication competence, introversion-extraversion, self-esteem, and so forth. Although it is certain that the situation would influence a person's level of WTC, the construct developed by Me-Croskey and associates has been conceptualized explicitly as a personality trait rather than as a situation-based variable. It is not necessary to limit WTC to a trait-like variable and in the present discussion, we treat it as a situational variable with both transient and enduring influences. Further, although McCroskey's work on WTC focuses on speaking, we propose to extend WTC to influence other modes of production, such as writing and comprehension of both spoken and written language.MacIntyre (1994) proposed a model describi...

Defining the motivational basis of second and foreign language acquisition has been at the center of much research and controversy for many years. The present study applied social psychological constructs to the acquisition of English in the unicultural Hungarian setting. A total of 301 Grade 11 students from the region of Budapest answered a questionnaire assessing their attitude, anxiety, and motivation toward learning English, as well as their perception of classroom atmosphere and cohesion. In addition, their teachers rated each of the students on proficiency and a number of classroom behaviors and evaluated the relative cohesion of each class group. Factor and correlational analyses of the results revealed that xenophilic (M=4.22on a 1–6 scale), sociocultural (M=3.96), instrumental (M=3.78), and media‐use reasons (M=3.79) were most strongly endorsed by the students whereas an identification orientation (M=1.8l)was rejected. Factor analysis of the attitude, anxiety, and motivation scales confirmed the existence of attitude‐based (integrative motive) and self‐confidence motivational subprocesses and revealed the presence of a relatively independent class‐ room based subprocess, characterized by classroom cohesion and evaluation. Correlational analyses of these clusters further revealed that, while all subprocesses were associated with achievement, self‐confidenceand anxiety showed no relationship to classroom atmosphere. We discuss these findings in the context of current theories of second and foreign language acquisition and with reference to their applied implications.

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As an initial step in extending Deci and Ryan's (1985) self-determination theory to the investigation of motivation in second language (L2) learning, the first goal of our

33taking from Luc Pelletier. When I began graduate school, Luc also started at the University of Ottawa as a new faculty member, and he taught a course in motivation. I had worked with Richard Clément for a couple of years already as an honors student and as a research assistant and had conducted research on orientations and motivation under his supervision as part of my honors thesis project. Luc was very interested in self-determination theory (SDT) and had worked with Bob Vallerand on an instrument to assess academic motivation from this perspective. Luc and I decided to carry out a study on language learning orientations using SDT and enlisted Richard's and Bob's involvement in the project. As a bilingual institution where all students were required to demonstrate competence in their second language (L2), whether French or English, the University of Ottawa was an ideal setting for this type of research.The project was a first examination of SDT in the language learning context, and to the best of my knowledge it was the only, or at least one of the very few, empirical investigations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the area. It involved the development of a valid and reliable instrument to assess the different subtypes of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It also explored the link between these motivational subtypes and various orientations to language learning that had been identified by Clément and Kruidenier (1983), including the travel, friendship, knowledge, and instrumental orientations. The results showed that the instrumental orientation and the SDT external regulation orientation were strongly correlated, and that the travel, friendship, and knowledge orientations were quite highly intercorrelated with identified regulation and intrinsic motivation. Moreover, the instrumental and external regulation orientation scales correlated in similar ways with the hypothesized antecedents of perceived autonomy and competence and the hypothesized consequences of intention to pursue L2 study and anxiety. In addition, the travel, friendship, and knowledge orientations were correlated with the hypothesized antecedents and 34Motivational Orientations and Self-Determination consequences in a manner similar to intrinsic motivation and identified regulation. These results suggested that Clément and Kruidenier's 4 orientations may be tapping a similar construct as the SDT orientations. My only regret with this study is that I did not include a scale to measure the integrative orientation (Gardner, 1985) to determine its relation with the SDT subtypes. This issue would have to wait until a later study to be addressed.