The issue that this study addresses is the unwillingness and hesitancy of form five Spanish students to speak in Spanish class when given the opportunity. To address this problem, the purpose of this study is to investigate the perspectives of form five teachers and students on students’ willingness-to-communicate orally in the Spanish classroom in three secondary schools in the Victoria Educational District, Trinidad. The present study sought to fill a gap in the literature by conducting entirely,
qualitative research on situational willingness-to-communicate in the classroom context. A multiple-case study design was employed in order to gain a deeper understanding of willingness-to-communicate. Data was collected online using multiple sources, namely, semi-structured interviews for three teachers, focused essay technique explicitly for the six students and teacher documents. Data was analyzed by means of the constant comparative method and cross-case analysis using the MAXQDA v.20 software. The findings reveal that individual, linguistic, affective, and situational factors facilitate and constrain students’ WTC. The cross-case analysis indicates that personality, type of task, topic, classroom environment, group size, teacher pedagogy and motivational strategies are the common themes between the teachers and students. The outcomes of this study have implications in the areas of communication, the enactment of Spanish as a foreign language, teacher development and training, classroom dynamics, and research methods. As such, more case studies should be conducted in the areas of productive and receptive skills of the language. To that end, this would boost students’ foreign language proficiency and enrich their willingness-to-communicate in the classroom setting.

Author: Ramona Boodoo

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2023

• Date of Conference: 26-28 June, 2023
• DOI: 10.20533/CICE.2023.0036
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-58-7
• Conference Location: Residence and Conference Centre, Toronto, Canada