Willingness to communicate (WTC) has been considered an important part of the language learning and communication process, playing a pivotal role in the development of language learners' communicative competence. Many studies have been conducted on the relationship between WTC and related variables in learning English as a foreign language. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive meta-analysis concerning the effect sizes of these studies. Thus, the present meta-analysis investigated the overall average correlation between L2 WTC and three key variables influencing foreign/second language learners' WTC, specifically perceived communicative competence, language anxiety, and motivation. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that all three variables were moderately correlated with L2 WTC, with perceived communicative competence having the largest effect. Finally, tests of the heterogeneity of the effect sizes indicated the possibility of the presence of the moderators which might play an influential role in the relationship of WTC with anxiety, perceived communicative competence, and motivation.

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Following the recent shift from negative psychology to positive psychology, interest in foreign language enjoyment (FLE) has grown noticeably in second language acquisition. Given the fact that learners are "persons-in-context" and are not "ergodic ensembles," the particular learner-context ecosystem goes through ongoing momentary changes with respect to individual differences like FLE. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of this ecosystem in terms of the interaction between individual learners and their learning environments. In this study, using a time-based sampling scheme of EMA, we explored the dynamism of different facets of FLE across different timescales including seconds, minutes, weeks, and months in a course of intermediate English as a foreign language. To do this, we applied open-ended interviews with two intermediate English language learners in a private English language institute across months, journals across weeks, enjoymeters across minutes, and the idiodynamic approach across seconds. Findings indicated that enjoyment in foreign language fluctuates in terms of a hierarchy of temporal scales, from moment-to-moment changes to the ones over months. The emerging patterns of enjoyment across different timescales in terms of the tenets of complex dynamic systems theory are discussed.

Anxiety in speaking English is a critical affective reaction to second language acquisition. Moreover, language learning is an emotionally dynamic process which produces fluctuations in learners' speaking anxiety. Therefore, this case study was designed to investigate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' speaking anxiety from an ecological perspective based on nested ecosystems model and complex dynamic system theory. Four intermediate level female students with an average age of 15 were selected and participated in this study. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews recorded by the researchers over five classroom sessions, non-participant classroom observation and Motometers to provide information regarding the dynamics of students' anxiety during these 5 sessions. The data were qualitatively content analyzed. Based on (Bronfenbrenner, The ecology of human development, 1979; Bronfenbrenner, The ecology of cognitive development: Research models and fugitive findings, 1993) nested ecosystems model, the emergence of learners' speaking anxiety were categorized and analyzed first at the level of microsystem in terms of learners' beliefs, motivation, cognitive factors, linguistic factors, affective factors, and classroom environment. Afterwards, the participants' anxiety within three ecosystems including meso-, exo-, and macrosystems were also discussed as they were offered by the collected data. Learners' anxiety was also analyzed based on the dynamic patterns of stability and variation in the participants' micro development. The findings contributed evidence to the ecological understanding of the patterns and variables involved in learners' speaking anxiety variation in light of the interaction of the individual and environmental factors.

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