Exploring the relationship between high school students' willingness to communicate and their self-efficacy perceptions in Turkish efl context

This research aimed to investigate high school students' willingness to communicate (WTC), their perceived self-efficacy in English and the relationship between these constructs.Theresearcher also aimed to explorethe underlying reasons for the participants' perceptions of themselves as being willing and/or unwilling to communicate and the reasons for the participants' perceptions of themselves as being efficient and/or inefficient in English. The participants (N=569) were 297 males and 272 females. For data collection, Self-Efficacy Scale for English, Willingness to Communicate Scale and interviews were employed. Descriptive statistics, frequencies and means were utilized to indicate participants' levels of WTC and Self-Efficacy. For investigating the relationship between the participants' WTC and Self-Efficacy levels, Pearsonr correlations were employed.Content-analysis techniques were utilized to analyze qualitative data.The results revealed the participants were somewhat willing to communicate (m=49,79). Also, participants had low self-efficacy perceptions of themselves regarding English (m=2,50).Asignificant and moderate correlation was found between participants' WTCand their self-efficacy in English (r=,426; p<,01). Regarding qualitative findings, the participants identified various reasons to account for their willingness or unwillingness to communicate in English.Among these, positive attitude towards English and interest in different cultures were the most commonly stated motives for being eager to talk in English. On the hand, affective concerns of the participants, such as fear of making mistakes or feeling anxious were mentioned as the reasons of unwillingness. As for their perception of inefficacy in English, the participants mostly highlighted the lack of vocabulary and grammar.