Students´ perceptions on the factors that influence their willingness to orally communicate in the EFL classroom in Ecuadorian high schools.

Abstract

This research is about students’ perceptions on the factors that influence their willingness to orally communicate in the EFL classroom in Ecuadorian high schools. This theme is important to study since motivation and willingness to communicate are vital for language learning of L2. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors like motivation, proficiency level, and personality type that affect students’ willingness to orally communicate. The general approach applied in this study was qualitative and quantitative. The data consisted on one hundred high school students from the city of Cuenca. Besides, this research was conducted with help of instruments as questionnaires and observation sheets in order to discover the truth about how the mentioned factors influence the participation of students in speaking activities in EFL classrooms. Thereby, the data collected was organized, and graphs were created to interpret the students’ answers. According to the data gathered, it was concluded that students have positives attitudes to participate in speaking activities. In fact, learners are motivated to speak English because they want to improve their proficiency level of English.