Willingness to Communicate in an L2 and Integrative Motivation among College Students in an Intensive English Language Program in China

Willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) has recently become an important concept across disciplines of second language acquisition (SLA) and communication. It has been proposed that pedagogic goals should be to increase learners’ L2 WTC so as to facilitate language learning. Incorporating the Canadian social psychological approach to L2 learning, extant research has suggested that integrative motivation is related to L2 WTC. This study examines the relationship between L2 WTC and integrative motivation among 174 college students attending an intensive English language program in China. This study is based on a hybrid framework of the WTC model and the socio-educational model. Correlational analysis and multiple regression are used to explore the predictive effect of integrative motivation on L2 WTC. It was Address for correspondence: Jian E Peng, TESOL Program, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia; Email: [email protected]. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL, 2, 33-59. ©2007 ISSN: 1834-3198 (Print) & 1834-4712 (Online)