A study on the relationship between Turkish EFL learners' willingness to communicate in English, ambiguity tolerance and parental encouragement level

This study aims to investigate Turkish EFL learners' willingness to communicate, tolerance of ambiguity, and parental encouragement levels. Moreover, a possible link between tolerance of ambiguity and parental encouragement levels with willingness to communicate was explored in the study. The research sample consisted of 151 preparatory school students at Hasan Kalyoncu University. A mixed-method research design was preferred in this study as both qualitative and quantitative research methods were utilized. ''Willingness to Communicate Scale'' developed by McCroskey (1992), ''Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity'' developed by Ely (1989), and ''Perceived Parental Encouragement Scale'' involved in ''Attitude/Motivation Test Battery'' developed by Gardner (1985) were used as data collection tools. SPSS 20.0 was operated to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaires. Frequencies, means, percentages, and standard deviations were calculated through this program. Moreover, independent samples t-test was utilized to detect whether there was a statistically significant difference relating to age, while one-way ANOVA was used to explore if there was a statistically significant difference relating language proficiency with willingness to communicate, tolerance of ambiguity, and parental encouragement levels. Apart from these, Pearson correlation was practiced to investigate the relationship between willingness to communicate, tolerance of ambiguity, and parental encouragement. Afterward, to detect the predictive power of tolerance of ambiguity and parental encouragement on willingness to communicate, multiple regression analysis was achieved. In the qualitative part of the study, 16 students who already took the quantitative part of the study were interviewed. The findings were examined through content analysis. According to the results, Turkish EFL learners showed high willingness to communicate, tolerance of ambiguity and, perceived parental encouragement. Besides, statistically significant results were found relating to the influence of age and gender. Furthermore, it was detected that tolerance of ambiguity and perceived parental encouragement predicted willingness to communicate positively. Finally, some linguistic, affective, contextual, individual factors and, self-perceived communicative competence were found to be influencing elements on learners' willingness to communicate. Moreover, some problems of tolerating ambiguity experienced by learners were detected.