混合式教学中任务特征对英语交流意愿的影响研究

The Impact of Task Characteristics on Willingness to Communicate in English in the Blended Learning Environment

混合式教学模式下,传统课堂的外延得到扩充,学习任务特征也随之发生改变,对学生的英语交流意愿产生一定影响。本文采用纵向追踪的研究方法,通过自我报告量表和跟踪访谈收集数据,探究混合式教学中学习任务特征对学生英语交流意愿的影响。研究发现,学生的即时交流意愿随学习任务的变化而波动,且即时交流意愿与学习任务的趣味性和有效性呈显著正相关;同时,即时交流意愿还可能受到学习任务挑战性的影响。因此,英语教师可通过提高学习任务的趣味性和有效性、合理规划学习任务的挑战性,激发学生的即时交流意愿,从而促进二语习得。希望本研究能为线上、线下英语教学中的任务设计提供一定启示。

Willingness to communicate(WTC)used to be studied as a relatively stable personality trait;however,recent research attention has been shifted to the state level of WTC and its dynamic nature,i.e.,the variations in WTC over time and across different situations.Blended learning extends the range of traditional classrooms and motivates students’ active participation in different learning activities,which may change the characteristics of learning tasks and influence students’ WTC.This article aims to explore Chinese EFL learners’ WTC and its situational antecedents in the blended learning environment.A longitudinal study was conducted with a group of 90 first-year non-English major undergraduates in a university in Beijing.Self-reported questionnaires were designed to collect data on students’ self-perceived WTC and the characteristics of ten different online or offline learning tasks.The task characteristics were measured on three dimensions, i.e., task-interest,task-effectiveness, and task-difficulty.Follow-up interviews were held to verify the results of the questionnaires and collect more detailed explanations of the relationships between WTC and the characteristics of different learning tasks.During the interviews,recordings of the ten learning tasks were used to stimulate students’ recall.Statistics showed that although the whole group’s mean level of WTC was rather fixed over time,individual students’ WTC fluctuated dramatically across the ten learning tasks.This result reveals that large amounts of variation in WTC may be overlooked,if research on WTC just studies students as a group without paying attention to each individual within that group.Significant and positive correlations were found between task-interest, task-effectiveness and WTC,indicating that the variations in students’ WTC were systematically related to their perceptions of the task characteristics.When students perceived the learning tasks as more interesting or more effective,they were more willing to communicate in English both online and offline.By contrast,task-difficulty and WTC were not significantly correlated,which suggested that students’ WTC might not be influenced by task-difficulty.However,qualitative data showed that students’ WTC was not only influenced by their perceived task-interest and task-effectiveness,but also affected by task-difficulty.The interrelationship between task-difficulty and WTC was nonlinear.Students preferred to communicate in the learning tasks that were at appropriate levels of difficulty(i.e.,neither too difficult nor too easy).These findings indicate that students’ WTC can be enhanced by systematically shaping the characteristics of the learning tasks.The article concludes that Chinese students’ WTC in the blended learning environment is dynamic and such variation in WTC is meaningful,as it is systematically correlated with tasks characteristics such as task-interest,task-effectiveness,and task-difficulty.This article provides novel insight into how WTC varies across different learning tasks in the blended learning environment,and how such variation can be studied both quantitatively and qualitatively.This article also provides a basis for pedagogical implications for English teachers who would like to facilitate students’ WTC in the online and offline EFL teaching environment.English teachers who would like to trigger students’ WTC are advised to improve task-interest and task-effectiveness,and optimize taskdifficulty when designing learning tasks.