An Exploration of Factors Contributing to Students’ Unwillingness to Communicate

One of the most challenging issues in language classes is the reluctance of learners to communicate. The term “unwillingness to communicate” (UWTC) is defined as a predisposition which represents a chronic tendency to avoid or devalue oral communication. The main aim of this study is to investigate the factors contributing to university level students’ unwillingness to communicate in English. The participants of this study were selected using the stratified sampling method and consist of 100 students from an English Language Teaching (ELT) Department. The data was collected through a questionnaire examining three dimensions, namely the affective factors, teacher-related factors and environmental factors underlying students’ negative communication behaviour. The results indicated that environmental factors such as rapport among students, class size, materials, noise and classroom atmosphere have the biggest effects with regard to students’ reluctance to communicate in English. On the other hand, affective factors including anxiety, shyness, lack of motivation, lack of vocabulary knowledge, lack of self-confidence, fear of being criticised, topic familiarity, peer pressure and fear of making mistakes have a second highest impact on students’ negative communication behaviour. When the items in the teacher-related category of the questionnaire were analysed in detail the results showed they ranked third most important in this context, with students attributing their reluctance to communicate to teacher attitudes, teacher pressure, lack of teacher support, lack of opportunity to speak English, and the use of the mother tongue and target language.

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Exploring the Factors Affecting Saudi University Students’ In-Class Willingness to Communicate in English

International Journal of English Linguistics ◽

10.5539/ijel.v10n5p75 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 75

Author(s):

Saud Alenezi

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Classroom Environment ◽

Willingness To Communicate ◽

Target Language ◽

Instructional Materials ◽

Research Approach ◽

Related Factors ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Affective Factors ◽

Northern Border

This study explores perceptions of Saudi university students about the factors that affect their in-class willingness to communicate (WTC) in English. The study is conducted using a qualitative research approach. The sample of the study comprises 30 EFL students enrolled in the Preparatory Year programme at the Northern Border University (NBU) in Arar City, kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and then analyzed using a thematic content analysis. The results revealed that there are 19 factors affecting the students’ in-class WTC in English which can be categorized into three main themes that are learner-related factors (e.g., self-perceived communication competence, fear of making mistakes, fear of being laughed at, feeling of shyness, lack of confidence, being afraid of public speaking, previous communication experience), affective factors (e.g., motivation, second language communicative anxiety, evaluation apprehension), and classroom environment factors (e.g., topic interest, topic familiarity, instructional methods, instructional materials, time, classroom apprehension, instructor, class size, classmates). The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for EFL practitioners about L2 learners’ in-class participation in the target language and provides some insights for the improving the learning experience of English as a foreign language.

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Investigation of Factors Influencing Speaking Performance of Saudi EFL Learners

Arab World English Journal ◽

10.24093/awej/vol11no4.5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 66-77

Author(s):

Saleh Alrasheedi

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Psychological Factors ◽

English Language ◽

Peer Pressure ◽

Target Language ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Efl Learners ◽

Affective Factors ◽

Speaking Performance ◽

Speaking Skills

Equal focus needs be placed on teaching all four basic skills of language learning: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. However, it is observed that due attention is not devoted to developing speaking skills in Saudi EFL learners; this task is especially challenging as English is not widely used or spoken in their day-to-day communication. The current study aims to investigate the psychological factors which affect learners’ speaking performance by: (a) examining the strategies learners use for developing speaking skills, (b) identifying obstacles confronted by learners in developing speaking skills, and (c) suggesting ways to facilitate the acquisition of English speaking skills. The research seeks answers to these questions: (1) What are some psychological factors affecting speaking skills of students? (2) Why do learners find speaking in English so difficult? . I distributed a questionnaire among 200 female and male participants majoring in various fields at Majmaah university in Saudi Arabia. I employed SPSS to analyze the accumulated data and displayed the results in descriptive tables. The results reveal that affective factors impacting students’ performance in speaking skills are shyness, peer pressure, anxiety, and fear of making mistakes. Other factors that hinder speaking performance are paucity of necessary vocabulary, lack of exposure to the target language, and scarce opportunities to practice speaking outside the classroom. The study contributes to the existing English language learning (ELL) literature through its focus on the affective factors impacting speaking performance in Arabic-speaking EFL learners.

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Abstract Writing: English-Speaking Countries vs. Greece

Meta Journal des traducteurs ◽

10.7202/004140ar ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 40 (4) ◽

pp. 579-593 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Maria Sidiropoulou

Keyword(s):

Mother Tongue ◽

Oral Communication ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Target Language ◽

Cultural Variation ◽

Written Discourse ◽

English Speaking ◽

Theory Of Discourse ◽

Pragmatic Equivalence ◽

Selection Of

Abstract Cross-cultural variation in written discourse has attracted less attention than similar variation in oral communication, although such studies are useful in quite a few areas of application, especially translation. The article intends to investigate tendencies in abstract writing between researchers from English-speaking countries and Greece. The data come from the Proceedings of the 9th World Congress of Applied Linguistics held at Thessaloniki-Halkidiki, Greece, in April 1990. Abstracts by Greek researchers are mostly written in English; it is assumed that internalized mother tongue preferences by Greek will be reflected in their writing in English. A sample of 100 abstracts is examined with respect to the authors' intentions in writing them and their attitude towards the readership. The frameworks assumed are B. Grosz and C. Sidner's theory of discourse structure (1985), P. Brown and S. Levinson's interactional model (1987) and B. Hatim and I. Mason's approach to translation (1990). The differences are of a pragmatic and communicative type: the two research groups differ in their preferences concerning the selection of discourse segments in the abstracts whereas their attitude towards the readership is described by a different positive/negative politeness pattern; no cultural group appears purely positively or negatively polite. Awareness of preferences in abstract writing facilitates both researchers and translators in achieving communicative and pragmatic equivalence in the target language.

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Investigation of Factors Influencing Speaking Performance of Saudi EFL Learners

10.31235/osf.io/unbtq ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Saleh Alrasheedi

Keyword(s):

Language Learning ◽

Psychological Factors ◽

English Language ◽

Peer Pressure ◽

Target Language ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Efl Learners ◽

Affective Factors ◽

Speaking Performance ◽

Speaking Skills

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The role of cross-linguistic stress pattern frequency and word similarity on the acquisition of English stress pattern by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

Revista Diadorim ◽

10.35520/diadorim.2012.v12n0a3978 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Amanda Post Silveira

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Speakers ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

American English ◽

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Stress Pattern ◽

Target Language ◽

English As Second Language ◽

Word Similarity ◽

L1 Transfer

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.

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Translating ambiguous and nonambiguous Words in a foreign Language

ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics ◽

10.2143/itl.139.0.2003201 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 139-140 ◽

pp. 129-152

Author(s):

Paul Bogaards ◽

Elisabeth Van Der Linden ◽

Lydius Nienhuis

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

University Students ◽

Language Learners ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Lexical Ambiguity ◽

Target Language ◽

Bilingual Lexicon ◽

The Individual

The research to be reported on in this paper was originally motivated by the finding that about 70% of the mistakes made by university students when translating from their mother tongue (Dutch) into their foreign language (French) were lexical in nature (NIENHUIS et al. 1989). This was partially confinned in the investigation described in NIENHUIS et al. (1993). A closer look at the individual errors suggested that many problems were caused by words with more than one meaning which each require different translations in the target language. In the research reported on in this paper, we checked our fmdings in the light of what is known about the structure of the bilingual lexicon and about the ways bilinguals have access to the elements of their two languages. On the basis of the model of the bilingual lexicon presented by KROLL & Sholl (1992) an adapted model is proposed for the processing of lexical ambiguity. This leads to a tentative schema of the mental activities that language learners have to perfonn when they are translating from their mother tongue into a foreign language, The second part of the paper describes two experiments we have carried out in order to find empirical support for such a schema. The last section of the paper contains a discussion of the results obtained as well as the conclusions that can be drawn.

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Indonesian adolescents’ perspectives on smoking habits: a qualitative study

BMC Public Health ◽

10.1186/s12889-020-10090-z ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Fithria Fithria ◽

Muhammad Adlim ◽

Syarifah Rauzatul Jannah ◽

Teuku Tahlil

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Study ◽

Junior High School ◽

Smoking Status ◽

Smoking Habit ◽

Peer Pressure ◽

Prevention Programs ◽

Smoking Prevention ◽

Smoking Habits ◽

Related Factors ◽

Effective Prevention

Abstract Background The prevalence of smoking among adolescents is high in Indonesia. Therefore, this qualitative research aimed to explore the perspectives of Muslim adolescents on smoking habits as a reference for developing effective prevention programs. Methods Three focus group discussions involving 24 junior high school male students (mean age = 13.75 years) were the main source of data for this phenomenological qualitative study. The discussion guide was developed by the researchers based on the reviewed literature and validated by experts. The research findings were analyzed using an inductive content analysis with systematic steps based on the stages of qualitative data analysis. Results Adolescent perspectives on smoking were grouped into two themes: perception of smoking and smoking-related factors. The perception of smoking encompassed three sub-themes: smoking as a social habit, contradictive feelings, and the Islamic perspective. The smoking-related factors included peer pressure, the parents’ smoking status, masculinity and curiosity. The results indicated that adolescents consider smoking as a social habit but with contradictory feelings. The smoking habit was also stimulated by peer pressure, imitating parents who smoke, feeling masculine and curiosity. Conclusion We suggest that health professionals who are interested in developing smoking prevention programs in Indonesia should consider the adolescent perspective on smoking so that the prevention program will be more effective and appropriate for adolescents.

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Nonattendance at Scheduled Appointments in Outpatient Clinics Due to COVID-19 and Related Factors in Taiwan: A Health Belief Model Approach

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18094445 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (9) ◽

pp. 4445

Author(s):

Yi-Ping Hsieh ◽

Cheng-Fang Yen ◽

Chia-Fen Wu ◽

Peng-Wei Wang

Keyword(s):

Health Behaviors ◽

Health Belief Model ◽

Health Beliefs ◽

Online Survey ◽

Health Belief ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Outpatient Clinics ◽

Related Factors ◽

Study Results ◽

Belief Model

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of hospital visits and attendance at scheduled appointments have dropped significantly. We used the health belief model (in three dimensions) to examine the determinants of non-attendance of scheduled appointments in outpatient clinics due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants in Taiwan (n = 1954) completed an online survey from 10 April 10 to 23 April 2020, which assessed how people perceived and responded to the outbreak of a fast-spreading infectious disease. We performed both univariate and multivariate logistic regression to examine the roles of cognitive, affective, and behavioral health belief constructs in nonattendance at scheduled appointments. The results indicated that individuals who perceived high confidence in coping with COVID-19 were less likely to miss or cancel their doctor’s appointments, whereas individuals who reported high anxiety and practiced more preventive health behaviors, including avoiding crowded places, washing hands more often, and wearing a mask more often, were more likely to miss or cancel their appointments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-heterosexual participants had a lower rate of nonattendance at scheduled appointments compared with heterosexual ones. The study results increase our understanding of the patients’ cognitive health beliefs, psychological distress, and health behaviors when assessing adherence to medical appointments during a pandemic.

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Associations between the spatiotemporal distribution of Kawasaki disease and environmental factors: evidence supporting a multifactorial etiologic model

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-93089-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Tisiana Low ◽

Brian W. McCrindle ◽

Brigitte Mueller ◽

Chun-Po S. Fan ◽

Emily Somerset ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Kawasaki Disease ◽

Environmental Factors ◽

Disease Model ◽

Information Criterion ◽

Developed Countries ◽

Spatiotemporal Distribution ◽

Atmospheric Concentration ◽

Related Factors ◽

Temporal Correlations ◽

Intestinal Infections

AbstractThe etiology of Kawasaki Disease (KD), the most common cause of acquired heart disease in children in developed countries, remains elusive, but could be multifactorial in nature as suggested by the numerous environmental and infectious exposures that have previously been linked to its epidemiology. There is still a lack of a comprehensive model describing these complex associations. We present a Bayesian disease model that provides insight in the spatiotemporal distribution of KD in Canada from 2004 to 2017. The disease model including environmental factors had improved Watanabe-Akaike information criterion (WAIC) compared to the base model which included only spatiotemporal and demographic effects and had excellent performance in recapitulating the spatiotemporal distribution of KD in Canada (98% and 86% spatial and temporal correlations, respectively). The model suggests an association between the distribution of KD and population composition, weather-related factors, aeroallergen exposure, pollution, atmospheric concentration of spores and algae, and the incidence of healthcare encounters for bacterial pneumonia or viral intestinal infections. This model could be the basis of a hypothetical data-driven framework for the spatiotemporal distribution of KD. It also generates novel hypotheses about the etiology of KD, and provides a basis for the future development of a predictive and surveillance model.

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University students’ perception toward the use of the mother tongue in the EFL classrooms

Studies in English Language and Education ◽

10.24815/siele.v8i3.19870 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (3) ◽

pp. 1094-1110

Author(s):

Siti Hawa ◽

Suryani Suryani ◽

Rini Susiani ◽

Ema Dauyah ◽

A. Halim Majid

Keyword(s):

Undergraduate Students ◽

English Proficiency ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Private University ◽

Structured Interview ◽

Target Language ◽

Mixed Methods Design ◽

Intermediate Students ◽

Advanced Students ◽

Negative Impacts

This study identified learners’ perceptions toward using the mother tongue and analyzed the function or occasions of its use in the EFL classroom. A mixed-methods design, employing classroom observation, questionnaire, and semi-structured interview as data collection methods, was used to pursue this study. The questionnaire items gained the students’ opinion on two categories, namely: students’ preference and occasion of mother tongue use. Twenty undergraduate students who took the Speaking course at a private university in Aceh were involved as the participant of the observation and questionnaire. Meanwhile, only three of them were chosen as the interviewee. The questionnaire data were analyzed quantitatively. In contrast, the observation and interview data were analyzed qualitatively. The results indicated that the use of mother tongue brought positive and negative impacts regarding the students’ perception based on their various English proficiency levels. The low level of English proficiency and intermediate students revealed a higher preference toward the mother tongue to understand the instructions, explain unfamiliar vocabularies, and understand the differences or similarities of English pronunciation and idioms. At the same time, the advanced students indicated a negative perception of mother tongue use. They chose to avoid using their mother tongue to improve their skill through maximum exposure to English as the target language in the speaking classroom atmosphere.

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