An enquiry into the relationship between the willingness to communicate levels of academicians at faculties of education and their Yds (Foreign Language Exam)

Willingness to communicate concept has caught the interest of many studies in the field of second language acquisition. Although studies which examine relationship between WTC and foreign language proficiency can be found in the literature, all of them were conducted with the participation of university students; therefore, this study aims to examine the WTC levels of the academicians working at Faculties of Education in Turkey, and the relationship between their willingness to communicate and proficiency as determined by YDS (Foreign Languages Examination). Another aim of this study is to obtain the views of the academicians towards their willingness to communicate in English and explore the factors affecting it. In order to pursue these aims, this study benefited from a mixed design which consisted of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The quantitative data was gathered by a questionnaire which included WTC scale and the qualitative data was gathered by semi-structured interviews. A total number of 450 (53.1% female and 46.9% male) academicians working at the faculties of education different parts of Turkey participated in the questionnaire which was administered online and from these participants eight (three female and five male) of them participated in the interviews. The quantitative results indicated that the academicians were moderately willing to communicate in English and they preferred communicating among friends, and the in small group discussion. Their willingness to communicate levels were also moderately correlated with their YDS scores (r=.37). The results of the interview showed similarity with the quantitative results in terms of willingness level and preference types. The factors affecting their willingness were language anxiety and foreign language proficiency (personal factors), interlocutor characteristics, formality of the situation, assistance of a peer, being assessed, and content of the talk (situational factors). The factors which affect their willingness showed similarity to the findings of previous studies in the literature. Moreover, aforementioned factors can be significant for future studies which aim to investigate what leads a person, more specifically academicians, to be more willing to communicate in English.