Instrumental and integrative orientations: Predictors of willingness to communicate in the Iranian EFL context

Given that promoting learners’ communicative competence in a second language (L2) is one of theprimary foci of communicative language teaching approaches, the late 1980s saw an expansion inresearch into willingness to communicate (WTC), which is deemed to affect individuals’ predispositiontowards the initiation of L2 communication. The principal aims of this study are(a) to reveal whetherinstrumental motivation and integrative orientation are correlated with WTC, (b) to delve into thecontribution of instrumental and integrative orientations to the explanation of WTC, (c) to examinewhich of the two motivational propensities is a better predictor of WTC, and (d) to find whether 3 groupsof learners with low, medium, and high levels of instrumental and integrative orientations differ interms of their level of reported WTC. To this end, 188 Iranian EFL learners, who were randomly selected,filled out a WTC questionnaire and a language learning motivation questionnaire. Results of pathanalysis and standard multiple regression revealed that although both motivational orientationssignificantly contributed to the explanation of WTC, instrumental motivation, which uniquely explained3.7% of the variance in total WTC, was a better predictor of WTC. Informed by the results of one-waybetween-groups ANOVA, a significant difference was encountered among the reported L2 WTC levelsof the 3 groups of learners with various levels of both instrumental orientation and integrativemotivation. The findings could cast light onto the nexus between motivation and WTC in the Iranian EFLcontext and the intricacies and dynamics of the WTC process.

کلیدواژه ها:

instrumental motivation ، integrative orientation ، motivational orientations ، Iranian EFLcontext ، willingness to communicate