Willing to Talk?

The number of international students following programs abroad has doubled in the last decade. This has led researchers to take interest in foreign students’ experiences in international educational environments in order to better understand and improve their international encounters. One of the leading reasons for stress and failure of international students was found to be the language barrier. This language barrier has been seen as strongly correlated with communication apprehension and perceptions of communication competence. More precisely, international students feel that their self-perceived communication competence and willingness to communicate are lower in their nonnative language compared to their native one. This also leads them to experience communication apprehension and essentially withdraw from talking altogether. Those three reasons have been researched in the past as communication traits which correlate and predict one another. In order to understand and help international students and instructors with the problems they face, a deeper understanding of those communication traits relating to language needs to be gained. Therefore, this study combines the common variables which are said to create problems for international students and explores how communication traits vary in the use of native and nonnative languages. In order to analyze a truly international environment, responses from students coming from 30 different countries were collected. Through the use of a quantitative survey which was then statistically analyzed it was discovered that students had higher mean scores in their native language compared to their nonnative ones for all three communication traits. All three communication traits had a statistically significant correlation which corroborated previous research. Additionally, their preferences for who they talk to and how in terms of context were found. Generally, international students felt most competent and were most willing to communicate in dyads or small groups with friends and acquaintances. Finally, the research explored the prediction powers of the three communication traits. It was discovered that between self-perceived communication competence and willingness to communicate the later was a better predictor of native language communication apprehension and that native language communication apprehension was the best predictor of nonnative communication apprehension. More research concentrating on an international educational environment needs to be done in order to gather information especially relating to language since it is the major problem international students face while following programs abroad.