Willingness to Communicate and Second Language Fluency: Korean-Speaking Short-Term Sojourners in Australia

Abstract

The current mixed-method study investigated two groups of Korean-speaking short-term sojourners in Australia. One group (students) was composed of learners enrolled in English training programs, whereas the other group (workers) was of learners in the workplace. We administered questionnaires and a semi-structured interview to examine their willingness to communicate (WTC) in English as their second language (L2) and explored the relationship between this variable and the sojourners’ amount of L2 contact and their oral fluency in English. Our quantitative analyses show that the student group showed a higher level of WTC and amount of L2 exposure than the worker group. For both groups, WTC si..