Japanese JHS students' Ideal L2 Selves: Confidence, anxiety, and willingness to communicate

This paper reports the results from an exploratory study which tested for Japanese junior high school student self-determination theorybased (SDT) motives toward EFL learning (N = 140), plus confidence, anxiety, and willingness to communicate in EFL (EFL WTC; N = 120). The purpose of this paper is to show the influence of the Ideal L2 Self items on anxiety, confidence, the SDT intrinsic motives for knowledge (IM Knowledge), and EFL WTC. Two survey instruments were used in the study. The SDT instrument results indicate the students are eager to become proficient in EFL. This is based on the high mean score for the three identified regulation items, which refer to motives to learn English for future goals (i.e., an Ideal L2 Self). The WTC instrument results indicated a low level of confidence and willingness to speak English, and much anxiety toward using English. To test the influence of the Ideal L2 Self items on WTC, a regression analysis of the SDT and WTC sub-scales was conducted (dependent variable: WTC). Accordingly, a structural equation model (SEM) of the Ideal L2 Self items, IM Knowledge, anxiety, confidence, and FL WTC was created. The SEM results indicate the Ideal L2 Self has a strong, statistically significant ( P = < .01) negative influence on anxiety and a stronger positive, statisti cally significant ( P = < .01) influence on IM Knowledge and between confidence and WTC; no path was found between IM Knowledge and WTC. The findings are discussed in relation to Dornyei’s (2005) Ideal L2 Self theory.

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