Mumtaz Ali

Biography

Worked as a Lecturer in the Department of English, Shah Abdul Latif University Khairpur, Sindh, Pakistan. He was awarded scholarship for doing MA (leading) to PhD in 2009. He has done MA (TEFL) with merit awarded from Swansea University Wales, UK in October 2010. The research that he conducted in his master dissertation actually made a solid foundation for him doing PhD on the topic “Willingness to Communicate” which has never been investigated before in Pakistan.

Qualifications

MA (TEFL) from Swansea University Wales, UK 2010
MA (English Literature) from University of Sindh Jamshoro, Pakistan

Thesis

Investigating Pakistani University Students’ Willingness to Communicate in English as a Foreign Language

The construct of “Willingness to Communicate” (WTC) was originally developed and introduced in first language (L1) communication with specific regards to talk or speech (McCroskey & Baer, 1985). In the second language (L2) context, it was adapted and extended by MacIntyre et al (1998) by conceptualising a heuristic model which integrates various linguistics, psychological and social variables as constitutive influences that may affects one’s willingness to communicate in L2. Dörnyei (2001:51) argues that the conceptualisation of this model in L2 is an attempt to draw together a number of learner variables that have been potentially established as influences on the acquisitions or use of L2. Willingness to communicate is defined as an intention or probability to initiate oral communication when he/she is free to do so in L2 ((MacIntyre et al., 1998). Kang (2005:291) further argues that this intention or readiness to engage in communication “may vary according to the interlocutor (s), topic, and conversational context, among other potential situational variables”. Therefore, he (2005:291) proposed a new definition of WTC: “Willingness to communicate (WTC) is an individual’s volitional inclination towards actively engaging in the act of communication in a specific situation”.

The undertaken project aims to investigate that to what extent are Pakistani university students willing to communicate in English as a foreign language and what affects their willingness. This study is to be carried out under hybrid design combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analysis techniques will be used to analyse the data. Research on willingness to communicate in English has been very scant to Pakistani context, and quite a few studies might have been conducted. Therefore, this research study is likely to have a several potential implications and the first and foremost will seem to be bridging the methodological gap in existing literature concerning the Pakistani contexts. Secondly, Linguists, researchers, teachers and course designers seem, at present, to be unaware pertaining to issues of WTC faced by Pakistani university students. The findings of this study may be the rich source of the contextual understanding of knowing the issues related to Pakistani students’ WTC.

Supervisors

Dr Robert McKenzie

Prof Regina Weinert