Student’s perceptions on the factors that influence their willingness to orally communicate in the EFL classroom in Ecuadorian high schools.

Abstract

It is important to give emphasis on the fact that English is known as the first and most spoken language around the world, and that reflects on the importance that nowadays people are giving to learn it. In this time, learning English has become a necessity in order to give people opportunities like to travel, make business, study abroad, etc. The present study is about the students ‘perceptions on the factors that influence their willingness to orally communicate in the EFL classroom and has been conducted in order to find out serious responses to the following questions: How does motivation influence students´ willingness to orally communicate?, How does proficiency level influence students´ willingness to orally communicate? and how does personality influence willingness to orally communicate? There are not many researches made on this topic, specifically about Ecuadorian high school students. It is important to develop the current research in order to determine whether they feel motivated to speak English in class or not, and what are the things that influence that motivation, also this project may define the relation between students personality and their participation in English classes. There are previous studies that analyze similar topics to the present study. First of all, the case of the research by Mohammad (2012) based on EFL learners’ Perception of Factors Influencing Willingness to Speak English in Language Classrooms. The results of this research demonstrated that the willingness to speak English is influenced by many factors, and not only to personality, as many teachers used to believe. In addition, the author found that the learners described the following facts as influencing their willingness to speak like topic familiarity, topic interest, topic preparation, sex of interlocutor, age of interlocutor, and some others described forward in the current research.