Willingness to Communicate in the Second Language Acquisition: A Case Study on Iranian 2-Year Old Kids

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Parviz Maftoon ¹ , Mehrdad Amiri ²

1 - Tehran Azad University
2 - Tehran Azad University

Received: 2011-05-01 Accepted : 2011-11-01 Published : 2011-01-01

Keywords: Bilingual, willingness to communicate (WTC), Second language development, Kids, personality trait, Social chatacteristics, L2 development,

Abstract :

Individual’s first language (L1) and second language (L2) communication could be affected by Willingness to Communicate (WTC) which is considered an influential factor affecting one’s second language development. Studying various aspects of WTC has been the home of choice for the researchers in the SLA domain (e.g., Clement, Dornyei, and Noels, 1998; McCroskey, & Baer, 1985; Kang, 2005; MacIntyre,;MacIntyre, 2007, Yashima, 2002). Yet, WTC is poor in terms research in the area of kids’ SLA. The present research is a qualitative attempt focusing on the concept of WTC among kids in an Iranian context. The review of the literature revealed that no valid instrument for measuring the kid’s WTC exists. Thus, a qualitative WTC study was designed to evaluate “the WTC construct”(cf. Mcroskey& Baer, 1985) in the kids developing an L2. The assumption based on which the study was framed was that WTC is both a personality trait as well as a socio- culturally oriented factor. Therefore the WTC scale designed by Mcroskey& Baer (1985) was modified to fit the kid’s situation and a WTC measuring instrument was developed to measure WTC in kids, presupposing that in case WTC is a personality trait it should be fairly consistent in various situations and contexts . The scale designed included four communication contexts: classroom, family settings, Iranian out of home context, and travelling to foreign countries and two types of receivers: stranger, acquaintance. The situations selected based on the scale were presented to the parents to select the most likely behavior and choices of the kids distinctly. The participants of the study were two 21- month-old sisters (non-identical twins) whose parents were willing to make them bilingual. They were trained for 7 months based on the Mom & Baby method of English language learning program developed by Amiri (2008).Films of classroom, interviews with parents, and observations were analyzed and classified through the frequency tables. The results of the study revealed that WTC could be considered both a personality factor and a social characteristic which affects L2 development among kids.