Willingness to Communicate and Second Language Proficiency: A Correlational Study

This study attempts to answer one straightforward question: “what is the relationship between students’ proficiency level and their willingness communicate?”, i.e., “readiness enter into discourse at a particular time with specific person or persons”, using an L2. Understanding link WTC important as great deal of effort expended by teachers worldwide on encouraging learners engage in L2, interaction more. If do so depends (in part) time, this may affect what type activities instruction are be provided class, especially compulsory English classes where students have less autonomy motivation. To establish relationship, we correlated 1836 Thai university Placement Test scores measured through three-part survey instrument, operationalised “self-perceived communicate”, “communicative self-confidence”, L2 use”. We found weak moderate correlation language proficiency, construct “self-confidence” being most strongly correlated. discuss some implications these findings relation EFL teaching.