Abstract:
Willingness to communicate (WTC) plays a central role in learning asecond/foreign language. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of doing problem-solving task on learners’ WTC in English. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 61 pre-intermediate learners were chosen by means of administrating a placement test. Learners were pretested through three scales of WTC and its two antecedents: self-perceived communication competence (SPCC) and communication apprehension (CA). Of course, the experimental group was provided with fifteen problem-solving tasks during the course, while the control group was not. After fifteen sessions of the treatment, two groups were posttested through the same three scales. The results demonstrated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of their WTC’s level. Moreover, the learners’ WTC was found to be directly related to their SPCC and indirectly related to CA. So based on the MacIntyre’s path model (1994), these both antecedents can be the best predictors of WTC. The analysis of the data was done through multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) statistical programs.
Machine summary:
"Due to the aforementioned research questions and the null hypotheses, as well as the design of the study, and also in order to examine the effects of the treatment on three communication variables (willingness to communicate, self-perceived communication competence, and communication apprehension), and to check whether two experimental and control groups are significantly different from one another on a particular variable of the study, multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were conducted.
Second research question Pretest A multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) was run to compare the experimental and control groups’ mean scores on the pretest of WTC, Communication Apprehension and Self-Perceived Competence.
28 Figure 3: Pretests of WTC Posttest A multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) is run to compare the experimental and control groups’ mean scores on the posttest of WTC, Communication Apprehension and Self-Perceived Competence.
A multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) was run to compare the experimental and control groups’ mean scores on the pretest and posttest of WTC, Communication Apprehension and Self-Perceived Competence and also to answer question two.
By doing so, the null-hypothesis as doing problem-solving tasks does not significantly affect Iranian EFL students’ willingness to communicate in English at the pre-intermediate level of language proficiency in comparison with another group doing no tasks at the same level of language proficiency was rejected because after the treatment the experimental group outperformed the control group in WTC level significantly."