A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

The Correlation between Key Words and Willingness to Communicate
Based on the findings from the fourth research question that Cheng Chih, Jian
Guo, and Ling Mei provided, the key words in the intended content of
communication could not be abandoned. They believed that when the key word was
abandoned, the message abandonment strategy became meaningless. Cheng Chih
further stated that he discovered that native-speakers and non-native speakers in
Taiwan mostly used only “key words” to communicate with him. From his
experience of working in a restaurant, he perceived that they usually used key words
to fulfill their need for communication. For example, they would say only “toilet” or
“sea food,” instead of talking to him with a complete sentence.
Indeed, the issue of “key words” inspired in this study is associated with the
issue of “willingness to communicate” (WTC) mentioned by MacIntyre, Clement,
Dornyei, and Noels (1998). The researcher believes that whenever the “key word” is
expressed, the goal of “willingness to communicate” (MacIntyre, Clement, Dornyei
& Noels, 1998) could be achieved. That is to say, when the difficult intended key
word is created or explained, the WTC in MacIntyre, Clement, Dornyei, and Noel’s
triangle model would be fulfilled, including “the desire to communicate with a
specific person, self-confidence, interpersonal/intergroup motivation, communicative
competence, intergroup climate, and personality” (p. 547).
Therefore, in this study, three students believed that no matter how difficult
the key word was in the communication, it had to be expressed somehow. Their
feelings reflected in this study were that the EFL speakers’ attempts to interact could
be inspired when there was any type of motivation and willingness was stirred.
Accordingly, this study suggested that the speakers should not abandon any intended
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