Willingness to Communicate, Foreign Language Anxiety and the Learning of Interpreting : A study of College Students in Hong Kong

It has been growingly recognized that Willingness to Communicate (WTC) and language anxiety play important roles in both first and second language acquisition. However, few investigations have been conducted as to the interaction between WTC and Foreign Language Anxiety in teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language; not to mention the study of their implications for the development of teaching materials. Besides, the Cantonese speaking environment in Hong Kong, being an obstacle for non-native Mandarin learners, poses extra challenges to the learning of Mandarin Chinese. It is under this backdrop that the current study is proposed to explore learners’ WTC and Foreign Language Anxiety in a college Mandarin program in Hong Kong. In this study, a battery of questionnaires has been administrated to 105 non-native Mandarin learners from a college CFL program. Besides exploring the relationship between learners’ WTC and Foreign Language Anxiety, the study will identify other learning factors (e.g., language learning environment, motivation, self-perceived language ability, language learning habits, software use, etc.) related to students’ WTC and language anxiety, as well as the impact of these factors on learning achievement. Implications of the research findings for the development of teaching pedagogy and materials will also be discussed. The study will disclose the role of WTC and Foreign Language Anxiety in the teaching and learning of Chinese language. Moreover, relevant findings of the study will help profile foreign language learners in a language environment where the target language is not spoken by the majority (i.e., Cantonese speaking people).