Investigating the Effects of Translanguaging Practices on Learners’ Willingness-to-Communicate and Foreign Language Anxiety in the EFL Context

This study investigated the effects of translanguaging practices on learners’ willingness-to-communicate (WTC) and foreign language anxiety (FLA) in the Korean EFL context. While considerable research has addressed the benefits of translanguaging practices in bilingual classrooms (Garcia & Wei, 2014), relatively little research has concerned the potential of translanguaging in foreign-language classrooms where teachers and their students all share the same first language. Little is still known about the role of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice to enhance learners’ willingness to communicate and/or to reduce their anxiety about the foreign language and learning tasks in the classroom context. This study thus explored how Korean EFL undergraduates demonstrate their level of WTC (Yashima, 2002) and FLA (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) in relation to the implementation of translanguaging. Students were divided into two groups: one group (N= 57) were encouraged to use both English and Korean to maximize the effectiveness of their communication in small-group discussions, while the other group (N = 54) were instructed to use only English in class. Their WTC and FLA levels were measured before and after instruction. (The reliability estimates for all measures were in the acceptable range of .81 to .91.) Two separate mixed ANOVAs were conducted to assess whether there were any differences between the two groups in the WTC and FLA ratings over time. Analyses of the WTC ratings indicated while the English-only group showed little change over time, the translanguaging group showed significant increases, F(1,109)=10.322, p=.002. Results of the FLA ratings, by contrast, showed no significant interaction effects between time and group, F(1,109)=1.173, p=.281, suggesting that both groups demonstrated a decrease in the anxiety level as a result of instruction. These results suggest the potential of translanguaging as a pedagogical practice and process in fostering learners’ willing to communicate in the EFL context.