Language Teaching Research Quarterly

This study is a narrative inquiry of willingness to communicate (WTC) in students who are learning speaking in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) in a teachers’ university in China. Through a narrative analysis of the qualitative data collected via a series of one-to-one interviews, it aims to reveal, from the learner’s perspective and in relation to WTC, the factors that influence the development of EFL speaking ability. The study shows that the six identified factors that are inductive to the learner’s success in learning spoken English are closely related to the learner’s WTC on the six corresponding layers of WTC. The relationships between those factors and WTC are fluid, dynamic and contextualised. Although the learner’s success in learning is generally dependent on their performance in the activities afforded in the program, their learning in a given activity is contingent on the ways those factors actually relate and operate.