Willingness to Communicate and Lexical Complexity: Exploring Cognitive Engagement during Tasks

Willingness to communicate is an individual difference variable that is argued to predict the likelihood of a person engaging in communication when the opportunity arises. Researchers have investigated the predicates of WTC, and more recently have looked at how it may predict the amount of language that students use when engaged in task-based discussions (Leeming et al., 2024). This engagement in interaction is hypothesized to lead to language learning. While the amount of language produced could be considered to be a measure of behavioral engagement, the quality of language produced is also important. Students may be talking at length, but not actually contributing meaningfully to the discussion. This paper describes an exploratory study that attempted to answer a simple question. When students are highly willing to communicate, do they use a greater complexity of lexis? This complexity of vocabulary was taken to represent cognitive engagement with the task. Students from two universities completed a questionnaire measuring WTC, and then completed an eight-minute quasi-academic discussion task in groups of three. Their output was transcribed and analyzed for linguistic complexity, which was then correlated with their WTC. Results showed that students who were higher in WTC produced language that had greater lexical diversity, but not more sophisticated lexis. This suggests that complexity of vocabulary may be a useful variable to consider when examining the relationship between WTC and task engagement, providing additional information beyond behavioral engagement.