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WILLINGNESS TO COMMUNICATE IN THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM:

AN INQUIRY LEARNING PROJECT IN A YEAR 7 CLASSROOM

Yunlin Jo Wang

Kirkwood Intermediate School

Rosemary Erlam

The University of Auckland

________________________________________________________________________

Abstract

This article describes an inquiry learning project that was carried out in a Year 7 Japanese language classroom following the teacher’s observation that a number of students were extremely reluctant to use Japanese in class. Students participated in a series of task-based lessons and the teacher kept records of students’ willingness to communicate during the period of this lesson sequence in a variety of contexts. Results show that students were prepared to use the target language both while working at tasks and in contexts outside of the task. Informal student interviews suggest that the tasks may have reduced communication anxiety and led to increased perceived communication competence (MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, Noels,1998). Students reported that they found playing games ‘fun’ and it is suggested that this may have contributed substantially to willingness to communicate.

INTRODUCTION Jo Wang teaches Japanese to Year 7 students (11+ years of age) in a Decile 7

1 intermediate

school in Christchurch. It did not take long for her to realise that amongst her class of 21 students, there were four who were extremely reluctant to communicate in Japanese in any classroom context. They typically either completed activities in English or refused to participate at all, simply commenting that speaking in Japanese was too difficult. This was of concern because of the large body of research (e.g. Ellis, 2005; Swain, 1995) which suggests that for effective learning to occur in the language classroom it is crucial for students to engage in language production (i.e., to use the language to communicate, rather than just to process language input). As a result of her participation in the Teacher Professional Development Languages (TPDL) programme, Jo was exposed, via the university course component of TPDL, to the theory behind task-based language teaching (TBLT). She had some reservations about TBLT, feeling that it would be better suited to students who had had more exposure to the language than her Year 7 students. She decided, however, to test out whether TBLT was as good as was claimed. From her reading she discovered that TBLT aims to

1 The decile indicates the socio-economic group that the school

catchment area falls into: a rating of 10 indicates a high socio-economic level.

provide learners with a purpose to use the target language in an authentic communicative situation. She reasoned that, in doing this, TBLT should also allow students to develop confidence in speaking the target language. Jo therefore engaged in an inquiry learning project to ascertain whether implementing TBLT in her class would give these unwilling students the confidence to speak in Japanese. This article describes this inquiry, which was undertaken in the context of Jo’s involvement in the Teacher Professional Development Languages (TPDL) programme in 2011.

WILLINGNESS TO COMMUNICATE The aim of most language programmes is to equip learners to communicate in the target language. In his synthesis of what makes for effective instruction in the language classroom, Ellis (2005) refers to the widely accepted notion that learners will learn a language best if they have opportunities to use language in ways that resemble how it is used naturally outside the classroom. It is often not difficult, however, to find learners who avoid communicating both inside and outside of the classroom. Given the increased emphasis on the importance of participation in authentic communication in language teaching, the relatively new concept of willingness to communicate (WTC) has attracted attention (Cao,

The New Zealand Language Teacher, Volume 37, November 2011 39

2006). In a foreign or second language classroom context WTC has been defined (Oxford, 1997) as “a student’s intention to interact with others in the target language, given the chance to do so” (p. 449). From a number of research studies, MacIntyre and colleagues (1998) have concluded that two of the strongest predictors of WTC are communication anxiety and perceived communication competence. However, other factors such as motivation, personality and gender have also been found to be linked to WTC (Hashimoto, 2002; MacIntyre, Baker, Clément, Conrod, 2001). A number of researchers (e.g., Dörnyei, 2005; Ellis, 2008) consider that WTC is one of a number of individual variables, along with language aptitude, motivation and others. WTC first originated with reference to L1 communication (McCroskey & Baer, 1985) and it was considered initially as a personality-based, trait-like characteristic that remained stable across situations. However, more recently it has been reinterpreted as a situational variable, being seen as something that is open to change according to context (MacIntyre et al., 1998). Cao and Philp (2006) found that learners’ WTC in a classroom could vary according to factors such as group size, conversation partner and task topic. Cao (2006) stresses the importance of WTC as a factor in the language classroom. She underlines the role that teachers can play in maximising the possibility that WTC is facilitated for students, suggesting that they can deliberately choose tasks that will motivate and engage learners or that they can place learners in situations where they are more likely to have the confidence to use the language they have acquired.

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING A task-based approach to language teaching and learning aims to provide language learners with contexts where they will function as language users and not language learners (Ellis, 2003). A language task is defined as one where there is some kind of communication gap that the language learner has to ‘fill’. In completing a task learners will be required to use their own linguistic resources, rather than just manipulate language that is given to them. The task will allow for language use that resembles that of a real world activity and, as such, will maintain the interest of the student (Willis & Willis, 2007). Finally, in a task there is an outcome that is extrinsic to the task itself, the completion of which will be a priority

(Ellis, 2003). TBLT has been widely embraced in language teacher education and professional development programmes in New Zealand following a literature review, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, which outlined ten key principles of effective instructed language learning (Ellis, 2005). These principles, which stressed the importance of provision in the classroom of opportunities for interaction, a focus on meaning and output, were seen to fit well with TBLT as a pedagogical approach. It could be hypothesised that having students engage in a given task where they are working towards an outcome that is not already known to them is potentially motivating and engaging. Hoogwerf (1995) found that students responded positively to working on a task and completed it more quickly than they completed their usual language activities. It could also be argued that because tasks frequently give students opportunities to work in pairs or in small group contexts, they could potentially reduce communication anxiety. It was with the aim of establishing whether giving students the opportunity to engage in tasks would facilitate their WTC that Jo undertook the present inquiry.

THE INQUIRY The school in which this inquiry took place is a state school situated close to the University of Canterbury. It is not zoned and thus accepts students from all areas of Christchurch. The majority of students are European New Zealanders but there are significant numbers of Asian students and small numbers of Māori and Pasifika students. Jo is one of a number of Asian teachers who has been employed at the school in recent years. Jo undertook the inquiry with her Year 7 students of Japanese. At the time of the inquiry they had been learning Japanese for 17 weeks. They had on average two lessons a week, each of 50 minutes’ duration. For the purposes of this study Jo taught a series of five task-based lessons over seven weeks. Her lessons were based on topics (e.g. food, animals, sport) and followed a typical pre-task / task / post-task sequence (Willis & Willis, 2007). In her pre-task, Jo typically taught new vocabulary/language or reviewed known language by having students play games. In the task, she had students use the language in a meaningful context where there was a communication gap and where, in so doing, they contributed to an outcome (Willis & Willis, 2007). For example, Jo gave each student one of two cards (see Figure 1, next page).


Figure 1: Pet Shop Task (each student had one of the two cards only and could not see their partner’s card) Students with Card A were pet shop owners and had information about pets they had in stock and how much each cost. Students with Card B had ¥1500 birthday money to spend on a pet. They had to use their own linguistic resources to communicate with the pet shop owner to find out which pets were in stock and which of these they could afford, that is, they were not given the language to use for this task. Each student had incomplete information and each needed to work towards the outcome of a successful purchase. In the post-task phase of a task-based lesson sequence Jo typically discussed with the students

any difficulties they had had and made connections between what they had learnt and prior learning.

The students As described above, the four students who were the focus of this inquiry, although generally considered by all teaching staff as hard working students with a positive attitude towards learning and school, were unprepared to communicate in Japanese. Table 1 records information about the students.

Table 1: Test and PAT Results Test / Students Student A

11 yrs Student B

11 yrs Student C

12 yrs Student D

11 yrs

PAT* Reading Comprehension

6 5 7 4

PAT Reading Vocabulary

6 4 n/a 4

PAT Mathematics 5 3 5 5

Spelling 31/50 11/50 36/50 20/50

*PAT scores are presented as stanines or achievement scores. The lowest performance level is stanine 1 and the highest is stanine 9. The average stanine is stanine 5.

Data collection Jo observed her students during seven lessons over a period of four months. She commenced with observing students during two of the more teacher-

centred lessons. These lessons were based on a Presentation/Practice/Production (PPP) approach where the language practice was very controlled and where the students functioned as language learners rather than language users (i.e., they did not use the language to genuinely communicate


and to work towards a recognisable outcome). For example, Jo would rehearse with the students in Japanese ‘what is your name? My name is ….’. Then they would have to go around and ask ten people their name in Japanese. Alternatively, she might hand out a dialogue, model it for the students, ask the students to practise the dialogues themselves and then present them to the class. These lessons served as base-line data, and based on Jo’s informal observation there were no instances where the four students who were the focus of this study engaged in communication in the target language. Indeed Jo noticed that these students would typically complete the activity in English just to get it over and done with and her impression was that they clearly did not enjoy learning Japanese. Jo then observed the four students during a series of five task-based lessons and kept a tally for each student recording every instance of their use of the target language. It is important to note that Jo included any attempt to speak in Japanese as an example of use of the target language. This included utterances that were single words as well as short phrases or sentences, and use of the language as a response to a question as well as use of the language as initiated by the student him/herself. Jo also investigated the use of Japanese in a number of different contexts. The first of these was while the students were working at a task (or an activity for a more traditional teacher-centred lesson). Jo hypothesised that students may be more prepared to engage in communication during a task where the focus was on task completion and where students were working with each other in

small groups, as opposed to a whole class context where everyone may share the same focus of attention. However, she did want to know whether any improvement in willingness to use the target language in a small group task context might generalise to other contexts, so she investigated whether these four students would be prepared to engage in communication outside of the context of the task, by looking at their actual use of the target language in these ‘outside task’ contexts. Lastly, she wanted to see whether the students would be more prepared to initiate communication when they were given an opportunity, so here she looked at whether they put their hands up to answer a question in the target language. The data relating to these three separate contexts is presented below.

RESULTS This section presents the data that were collected as described in the preceding section. Jo recorded all instances where the four students used Japanese, both within and outside the context of the task. She also recorded how many times these students put up their hands in class in a context where they would have the opportunity to communicate in Japanese. Table 2 shows that all students did use the target language while they were engaged in completing a task. One student, Student B, did not use any spoken Japanese during the first task-based lesson, but did during subsequent lessons. Not surprisingly, those students with the highest scores in terms of engaging in using the target language were those who were least absent from class.

Table 2: Instances of Communication in TL during Class Activity/Task

Trad. lessons Task-based lessons Total

Date 10/05 21/06 10/08 12/08 22/08 5/09 6/09

Student A * * 6 n/a 5 A A 11 Student B * * 0 3 4 7 3 17 Student C * * 3 2 4 5 4 18 Student D * * 3 n/a 6 A A 9

* = no instances of use of Japanese based on informal observation/ A = student absent from class n/a = no data as student was not a focus of observation during lesson Table 3 shows that all students also used Japanese to communicate outside of the context of working on a task. It is interesting to note that, once again, Student B did not do this immediately, but only by the third lesson. There is a noticeable

variation in total instances of communication and the higher scores on the third lesson suggest that there may have been something specific to this lesson that led to higher levels of oral participation.


Table 3: Instances of Communication in TL Outside of Activity/Task Completion


Date 10/05 21/06 10/08 12/08 22/08 5/09 6/09


* = no instances of use of Japanese based on informal observation/ A = student absent from class n/a = no data as student was not a focus of observation during lesson Table 4 presents data that shows whether students were prepared to volunteer more in class to use Japanese in order to respond to teacher-led queries. There is some limited evidence to suggest that these four students were more prepared to

initiate communication in Japanese in a whole-class context, although the total scores here are lower than those for communication in the other two contexts.

Table 4: Willingness to Communicate in TL – Students Putting Hand up in Class in Response to Teacher Led Queries


Date 10/05 21/06 10/08 12/08 22/08 5/09 6/09


* = no instances of use of Japanese based on informal observation/ A = student absent from class n/a = no data as student was not a focus of observation during lesson Whilst Jo’s primary focus in this ‘teaching as inquiry’ was to establish how she could improve the communication efforts of the four students who were reluctant to communicate, she could not help noting an overall greater willingness on the part of the whole class to use and particularly experiment with Japanese as a result of implementing a task-based approach. For example, during the pet-shop task described above, students asked Jo for how they could say in Japanese – ‘don’t touch if you can’t afford to buy’.

Discussions with students Jo was interested to find out more information about why the four students who were the particular focus of her inquiry might be reluctant to communicate in the Japanese language classroom. She also wanted to know more about their attitude to learning Japanese, so she interviewed all four students. Both Students B and C (see quotes below) indicated that, for them, it was the ‘game’ like aspect of the task that gave them the confidence to speak in Japanese.

Student B: I spoke in the game because I was having fun. I feel more comfortable working with small groups. I enjoy doing the survey activities

because it was just talking to one person. Student C: Getting easier ‘cos of the game … in the game we repeat the same things over and over, that helps remembering Japanese.

It is interesting to note, however, that each of these two students indicates a different factor that has accounted for a willingness to communicate. Student B (who took more time than the others to ‘break the barrier of silence’) appears to have gained confidence because the small group was perceived to be less threatening. For this student communication anxiety seemed strongly linked to WTC. For Student C confidence came from rehearsing the language. Student D also mentioned the repetition of language in the context of the game as a reason for the confidence to use Japanese – ‘in the game we get to say the same words a certain amount of times so we get to practise the words many times.’ For both these students, it appears that perceived communication competence may be strongly linked to WTC (MacIntyre et al., 1998). However, it is perhaps important to stress the fact that students mentioned that completing the task was a ‘game’ and that they were having fun. The description of the type of traditional lesson (see above) that these students were exposed to suggests that


there had already been opportunities for them both to use the target language in small groups and to rehearse language. In this respect the novel feature of a task-based approach for the students was that they were playing games and having fun. It may be that this feature was most responsible for an increased willingness to communicate.

LIMITATIONS This article has described a small scale venture into ‘teaching as inquiry’. It is limited by factors outside of the inquiring teacher’s control, such as student absences. It is also limited because the inquiring teacher had to implement all phases of the project on her own, including the observation of students. It is possible that there is a degree of unreliability with the data collected, in that it was at times difficult for the teacher to monitor the language use of all four students (for those lessons when all were present) at once. Furthermore, like all ‘action research’ inquiries, this project is limited in that it gives information about one specific teaching context only and so lacks generalisability.

CONCLUSION This small scale investigation provides some preliminary evidence that task-based language teaching may facilitate willingness to communicate in the language classroom. The four students observed all showed an increase in their use of Japanese both within-task contexts and out of task contexts. There is also some preliminary evidence to show that they were more willing to respond in Japanese to teacher questions. When questioned, two students indicated that the repetitive nature of the language used in tasks helped them, suggesting that the tasks may have impacted positively on their perceived communication competence. For a third student it seems that the possibility of working in groups may have lessened communication anxiety. However, students also referred to tasks as playing games and mentioned that they had ‘fun’. It is suggested that it may have been this aspect that most contributed to a willingness to communicate. It is to be hoped that other teachers will be encouraged to carry out inquiry learning investigations in their own classrooms in order to further our knowledge of the conditions and contexts that will be more likely to motivate students to use target language.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Principal of Kirkwood Intermediate School has given permission for this inquiry learning investigation to be published, and the students have given permission for data relating to them to be reported.

REFERENCES Cao, Y.-Q. (2006). Temporal fluctuations in

situational willingness to communicate in a second language classroom. New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 1-16.

Cao, Y.-Q., & Philp, J. (2006). Interactional context and willingness to communicate: A comparison of behaviour in whole class, group and dyadic interaction. System, 34(4), 480-493.

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Ellis, R. (2005). Instructed second language acquisition: A literature review. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education.

Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hashimoto, Y. (2002). Motivation and willingness to communicate as predictors of reported L2 use: The Japanese ESL context. Second Language Studies, 20(2), 29-70.

Hoogwerf, P. (1995). Evaluation of a Grammar CR Task. Unpublished M. Ed. course paper, Temple University Japan.

MacIntyre, P. D., Clément, R., Dörnyei, Z., & Noels, K.A. (1998). Conceptualising willingness to communicate in a L2: A situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation. Modern Language Journal, 82, 545-562.

MacIntyre, P., Baker, S., Clément, R., & Conrod, S. (2001). Willingness to communicate, social support, and language learning orientations of immersion students. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23(3), 369-388.

McCroskey, J. E., & Baer, J. E. (1985). Willingness to communicate: The construct and its measurement. Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association convention, Denver, CO.

Oxford, R. (1997). Cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and interaction: Three communicative strands in the language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 81(4), 443-456.

Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidhofer (Eds.), For H. G. Widdowson: Principles and practice in the study of language (pp.125-144). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.


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