Native Hungarian speakers and their willingness to communicate in a business English context

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Whether we like it or not, we live in a more global society than ever. Increased internationalization in various scenes of our lives like business arenas, political and economic stages as well as social participation has led to a greater need for speaking a common language. Every day millions of people use English as the language of their business activities. In the past, international business contact has not always been successful, so English learning has become more and more popular and as a result speaking ‘Business’ as a competence is no longer just a soft skill but is a must for individuals to succeed at work. As part of the development of how to teach English more effectively, the concept of Willingness to Communicate became more and more essential. Therefore, one of the aims of this thesis work is to find out what factors affect mainly Hungarian adult learners’ motivation or willingness to speak in English. In recent years, language teaching shifted the primary purpose of teaching from linguistic competences to the more practical and reasonable concept, namely to the ability of communicating in a foreign language (Alemi et al. 2013, p.42) Everyone who has participated in a foreign language class before or has been a part of a foreign language speaking group or community must be aware of the phenomenon that some people are more willing to communicate and be an active participant of the conversation while some people are more embarrassed to speak in front of others. What can be the reason behind these behavioural differences? We as individuals have to recognize that the best exercise to improve ourselves is the continuous use of our chosen second language. Thus, the best practice is communication and the willingness to communicate is the best predictor of being a proficient learner. (Mirsane & Khabiri, 2016, p.399) Although the focus language of this study is only English, insights can be applied to any other language a person speaks. The reason why speaking activities are the main focus of this study is because this is the most salient indicator of language use ability. When I chose Hungarian native speakers’ Willingness to Communicate for my thesis topic, my presumption was that Hungarian people are not really willing to communicate unless they have a very good command of English. I assumed that because we all bring 4 the same kind of educational background, which rather focused on the rules of grammar instead of fostering speaking skills. So when beginning to write the thesis work and started the research, my hypothesis was that Hungarian native speaker adults’ Willingness to Communicate in a second language, namely in English is very limited, and it takes a lot of effort to improve it. In the second, empirical part of present thesis the following research questions helped my examinations. The questions I sought to answer were: 1) What factors mostly influence Hungarian native speaker adults’ Willingness to Communicate when they are in the Business English context? 2) Which teaching formats successfully foster WTC in a Business English training context and which ones are less successful? 3) What are the intentions of Hungarian adults learning Business English? I have investigated the answers to these questions by reviewing academic literature and conducting a quantitative and qualitative research.