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A Meta-analysis of L2 Willingness to Communicate and Its Three High-Evidence Correlates

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Abstract

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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Notes

  1. Jeon and Yamashita (2014) conducted a meta-analysis to examine the overall average correlation between second language (L2) reading comprehension at the passage level and 10 key reading component variables investigated in the review of literature. Four high-evidence correlates and six low-evidence correlates were involved in the study. The findings indicated that L2 grammar knowledge (r = .85, and CI = [.58–.95]), L2 knowledge of vocabulary (r = .79 and CI = [.68–.86]), and L2 decoding (r = .56 and CI = [.46–.65]) were the three strongest correlates of L2 reading comprehension. The six low-evidence correlates showed mean correlations with moderate to strong levels, L2 listening comprehension was the strongest correlate(r = .77) and metacognition (r = .32) was the weakest correlate.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran

    Majid Elahi Shirvan & Gholam Hassan Khajavy

  2. Cape Breton University, Sydney, Canada

    Peter D. MacIntyre

  3. Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

    Tahereh Taherian

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  1. Majid Elahi Shirvan
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Elahi Shirvan, M., Khajavy, G.H., MacIntyre, P.D. et al. A Meta-analysis of L2 Willingness to Communicate and Its Three High-Evidence Correlates. J Psycholinguist Res 48, 1241–1267 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-019-09656-9

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