Teacher''s Immediacy and Students'' Willingness to Communicate (WTC): Perceived teacher''s verbal immediacy behaviors in English class

• Main Authors: Ya-Li Hsu, 徐雅莉
• Other Authors: Chaochang Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/uwf4r9

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 應用英語學系碩士班 === 93 === In the EFL English classroom, communication between teacher and students is necessary. Although, the major purpose of communication in a language classroom is for learning English, it could be used for the social function as well. In this case, the relationship between teachers and students becomes an important key that opens the door of the personal communication. By adopting verbal immediacy behaviors in the classroom, teachers could establish a closer relationship with students. The close interpersonal relationship between teachers and students motivates students to talk. In this study, the researcher aims to use qualitative approach to explore learners'' perceptions of how the immediate relationship influences their willingness to communicate (WTC) and to reconstruct verbal immediacy behaviors to find out their influences in English teaching and learning process. Hence, the researcher engaged in the classroom observation and conducted interviews with students and with the teacher to answer these questions with the method of triangulation. By interviewing the teacher and students, the result showed the teacher''s immediacy could be a plus, a minus or even an insufficient variable to influence learners'' willingness to communicate (WTC), depending on their level of language anxiety. The higher their language anxiety is, the less positive effects immediacy brought to learners. Furthermore, uncovered from the interviews with the teacher and students, the six verbal immediacy behaviors were identified: talking to students frequently and actively, relating topic to students'' lives, observing learners to give responses, memorizing and sharing learners'' information, providing teacher''s self-disclosure and humor. Analysis of the classroom observation data showed how these indicated verbal immediacy behaviors influenced English teaching and learning. Although learners'' communication behaviors and English learning could not be attributed to teacher''s immediacy alone, the frequent occurrence of the natural and authentic communication, which maybe aroused by the teacher''s verbal immediacy, would be what language teachers expected. In sum, the teacher''s verbal immediacy behaviors not only decreased the psychological distance between the teacher and students but also facilitated students to learn English.