EFL learners’ speaking proficiency and its connection to emotional understanding, willingness to communicate and musical experience

Abstract

One of the main reasons for studying a foreign language is communicating with others, but many students do not feel confidently enough when trying to develop their speaking skills. Among adolescents’ frequent activities are that of listening to music while paying attention to song lyrics. We hypothesize that these musical experiences could influence their speaking skills. The present study aims to consider different factors that could influence students’ speaking proficiency. Among these factors, students’ emotional understanding, their willingness to communicate in a FL and their musical experience are considered. One hundred and twenty-four students of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the fourth year of Secondary Education from three different high schools in Spain took part in the study. Oral data were collected through individual interviews and three scales were administered to measure the different factors. Students’ musical experience and emotional response to music were measured through The Absorption in Music Scale, their emotional understanding of verbal texts through The Situational Test of Emotional Understanding – Brief, and their willingness to communicate in the EFL class through Willingness to Communicate Scale. Although no direct connection was found between students’ musical experience and their speaking proficiency, results demonstrate that students with high emotional understanding show better speaking skills and that students with musical experience exhibited higher emotional understanding. We detected a significant positive connection between emotional understanding and all the five parameters considered to assess students’ speaking proficiency. The connection between willingness to communicate in the EFL class and students’ speaking skills is even greater.