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An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate

  • Yupei Wang ORCID logo and Quan Xu ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: February 15, 2024
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 63 Issue 3

Abstract

Employing the Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) as a theoretical framework, this study explores the interconnectedness of cognitive and affective components within the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) among eight undergraduate students in a university classroom in China. The eight students were divided into four pairs, engaging in a communication task in English, followed by self-ratings of WTC using software and stimulated recall interviews. Interconnectedness was examined on a per-second basis. Analysis of these interconnected interactions revealed five patterns across three states of WTC. Among the rising, stable, and declining states of WTC, cognitive issues (e.g., discrepancy in viewpoints, vocabulary retrieval, self-monitoring) dynamically interacted with affective instances (e.g., anger, excitement, and emotional dependence on the partner), influencing the pattern of interconnectedness. The findings suggest that interconnectedness in WTC exhibits reciprocal interaction and nonlinearity. Speculation within these intricate cognitive-affective interactions suggests that affective components may have a greater influence on determining the level of L2 WTC. These insights highlight the dynamic interplay between WTC components and the system as a whole, revealing their uneven influence on the WTC system.

Keywords: willingness to communicate (WTC); complex dynamic systems theory (CDST); idiodynamic method; interconnectedness; nonlinearity
Corresponding author: Quan Xu, School of Foreign Languages, Central China Normal University, Wuhan City, Hubei Province, 430000, China, E-mail:

Funding source: National Social Science Fund of China

Award Identifier / Grant number: 18BYY097

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to all the students involved throughout this research process. We also thank the reviewers of this paper for their useful comments and suggestions.

  1. Research ethics: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.

  2. Author contributions: Yupei Wang and Quan Xu played pivotal roles in conceptualizing the research idea that underpins this study. Yupei Wang undertook the collection, transcription, coding, and interpretation of the data. Concurrently, Quan Xu provided a meticulous review and double-coding of the data, in addition to offering critical supervision of the findings. Through collaborative dialog, both authors significantly contributed to the refinement and synthesis of the results as presented in the final manuscript. The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Research funding: The study was financially supported by National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences, grant number 18BYY097.

  5. Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.

Appendices
Figure A.1: Example of second-by-second willingness-to-communicate ratings and transcription. Note: Column A: timestamp; Columns B and C: participants’ self-ratings of situated WTC; Column D: the pseudonym of the speaker who takes the floor; Column E: the transcription of the speaker’s utterance during the task; Column F and G: participant’s comments on their WTC changes.
Figure A.1:

Example of second-by-second willingness-to-communicate ratings and transcription. Note: Column A: timestamp; Columns B and C: participants’ self-ratings of situated WTC; Column D: the pseudonym of the speaker who takes the floor; Column E: the transcription of the speaker’s utterance during the task; Column F and G: participant’s comments on their WTC changes.

Figure A.2: Example of the coding procedure.
Figure A.2:

Example of the coding procedure.

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Received: 2023-08-27
Accepted: 2024-01-11
Published Online: 2024-02-15
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
  4. Research Articles
  5. Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
  6. Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
  7. Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
  8. Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
  9. Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
  10. Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
  11. Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
  12. “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
  13. Regular Articles
  14. Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
  15. A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
  16. Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
  17. Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
  18. Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
  19. General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
  20. Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
  21. Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
  22. Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
  23. The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
  24. An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
  25. “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
  26. Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
  27. Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
  28. A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
  29. Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
  30. The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2023-0207
Keywords for this article
willingness to communicate (WTC); complex dynamic systems theory (CDST); idiodynamic method; interconnectedness; nonlinearity

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
  4. Research Articles
  5. Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
  6. Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
  7. Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
  8. Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
  9. Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
  10. Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
  11. Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
  12. “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
  13. Regular Articles
  14. Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
  15. A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
  16. Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
  17. Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
  18. Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
  19. General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
  20. Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
  21. Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
  22. Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
  23. The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
  24. An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
  25. “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
  26. Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
  27. Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
  28. A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
  29. Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
  30. The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
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