| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 外國語文學系 === 92 === This study investigated Taiwan’s university freshmen’s learning motivation, willingness to communicate (WTC), and frequency of communication in English in their Freshman English classes, and explored the relationships among these three components. In addition, the effects of English proficiency level and gender on the relationships among these three components were examined.
326 non-English major students in total (including 142 males and 184 females) participated in the study at the very beginning of the spring semester in 2004. All of them were enrolled in the well-established, unified Freshman English for Non-English Majors (FENM) program at Tunghai University, which is located in central Taiwan. They were assigned to FENM classes of high, mid, and low English proficiency levels based on their scores on an English placement exam they were given when they entered the university. Among them, 111 were from high-level, 114 from mid-level, and 101 from low-level classes, respectively. All the participants completed a Chinese version of a 60-item questionnaire to provide data for the study. The questionnaire consisted of two parts: Part I with 10 items on the participants’ background information, and Part II with 50 items on their self-evaluation of English learning motivation, WTC in English, and frequency of communication in English in their Freshman English classes.
The software package SPSS 10.0 for Windows was used to organize and analyze the data to provide both descriptive and inferential statistical results. The significance decision level was set at α < .05 for all statistical significance testing. Linear multiple regressions were performed to investigate the relationships among the participants’ English learning motivation, WTC in English, and frequency of communication in English in their Freshman English classes as well as to examine the effects of English proficiency level and gender, respectively, on the aforementioned relationships that were under investigation.
The major findings of the study were summarized as follows. First, significant linear correlations were found among the freshmen’s English learning motivation, WTC in English, and frequency of communication in English. Second, between English learning motivation and WTC in English--the two predictors of frequency of communication in English, WTC in English turned out to be the only significant predictor in all three different English proficiency levels and in both the male and female groups. The contribution of English learning motivation as a predictor was partialed-out by WTC in English due to the high correlation between the two predictors. Third, among the three English proficiency levels, WTC in English was shown a more powerful predictor of frequency of communication in English for the high- and low-level than for the mid-level participants. Fourth, WTC in English turned out to be a more powerful predictor of frequency of communication in English for the male than for the female participants.
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