Emotioncy, Extraversion, and Anxiety in Willingness to Communicate in English

Iran, ID LLCE2016-243;            A myriad of factors may be involved in learning a second language, one of which is individuals` Willingness to Communicate (WTC). Research has shown that, all things being equal, those who are more willing to engage in conversation with others, are more effective language learners.  WTC may be in turn influenced by a variety of proximal (e.g., anxiety) and distal (e.g., extraversion) factors. Emotioncy as a newly-developed concept, which refers to the emotions evoked by the senses, is also hypothesized to affect WTC. Emotioncy ranging from exvolvement (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic) to involvement (inner and arch), focuses on measuring quantitatively the sense-emotion relationship. To test the hypothesis: the higher the level of emotioncy, the higher the level of WTC may be, forty one advanced English language learners were asked to participate in a discussion class. Immediately after discussing a couple of topics, the learners were asked to take the emotioncy, extraversion, state anxiety, and WTC scales. The results showed that extraversion and emotioncy are positively related to WTC, while anxiety negatively influences it. Concerning emotioncy, it was found that the involved individuals are more willing to talk than the exvolved ones. In sum, the outcomes of the study provide empirical support for the significance of emotioncy in WTC, suggesting it as a new concept to be investigated more deeply by language educators and researchers.

Key terms: Emotioncy, Involvement, Exvolvement, WTC, Extraversion, Anxiety, Language learning