M.A. thesis — classroom action research on Willingness to Communicate in young learner EFL.
Three of four indicators grew; longer answers remained fragile and task-dependent. WTC in young learners is shaped less by ability than by task type, interaction and felt safety.
Many young EFL learners have enough English to speak — and still stay silent. The classroom problem is rarely linguistic. It is a problem of choice: the moment a child decides, or refuses, to open their mouth.
MacIntyre's L2 Willingness to Communicate (WTC) pyramid frames that moment as the product of trait factors, situational variables, motivation and emotional safety. Most WTC research focuses on adults. This study asks what the construct looks like in Grade-2 learners — and what a teacher can actually do about it, week by week.
Stated in Ch. 4 · §4.1 Aim, Design & Instruments.
To investigate how a sequence of speaking activities influences four observable indicators of WTC in young EFL learners over eight weeks.
How does learners' WTC-related participation change across three action-research cycles?
Which task types most reliably elicit speaking first, asking questions, longer answers and peer-to-peer talk?
What classroom conditions support — or undermine — a learner's choice to speak?
A small-scale classroom action-research study with four Grade-2 learners (age 7–8) in a Polish primary school using Learning Lands 2. Each cycle introduced a new activity type, kept what worked, and adjusted to what the children actually did when invited to speak.
Each child held half of a picture set and had to ask, listen and confirm in English. The gap forced talk — first signs of speaking first and asking questions emerged, but answers stayed short and learners often waited to be nominated.
A puppet and short role cards let learners speak through a character. Planning time and explicit scaffolding reduced anxiety, lengthened answers and made peer-to-peer talk more frequent — though one learner regressed when interrupted.
A talking-token routine guaranteed every learner a turn, then opened into free-topic mini-talks on familiar content. Speaking first and peer interaction became more stable; longer answers remained the hardest indicator to grow.
Rather than test scores, the study followed four observable participation behaviours — recorded per learner per session in a structured grid, then triangulated with field notes and learner reflections.
Self-initiated talk without teacher nomination.
Learner-initiated questions to teacher or peers.
Multi-clause responses beyond one-word replies.
Peer-to-peer L2 exchanges during tasks.
Speaking first, asking questions and peer-to-peer talk all increased across cycles.
The hardest indicator to move — sensitive to interruption, fatigue and task framing.
Information-gap opened talk; role-play lengthened it; free-topic stabilised it.
Thesis, instruments, materials and international dissemination.