EFL Students’ Perception on Factors Influencing Willingness to
Speak in Multicultural Classroom
Rizky Lutviana, Riza Weganofa, Ayu Liskinasih, Umiati Jawas
Universitas Kanjuruhan Malang
Keywords: Willingness to Speak, Multicultural Classroom, Speaking.
Abstract: One of the factors that contribute to the success in teaching speaking is students’ willingness to speak, yet
the study on students’ willingness to speak is limited to the classroom setting in which most students came
from the same culture. This present study is aimed at unveiling 33 EFL students’ perception on factors
influencing willingness to speak in multicultural classroom. Students in the multicultural classroom came
from 5 different regions in Indonesia; Java, Sumba, Borneo, Sunda and Papua and they had different
cultural and learning background. The instruments used to collect the data were observation and interview
that was done at the same time when the researcher taught them. Based on the data analysis, it could be
concluded that factors that influenced students’ willingness to speak were: (1) the task (including the design
of the task, the amount of the task, and the topic of the task), (2) motivation from both lecturer as well as
classmates, (3) the interlocutor and the types of speaking interaction (face to face or by group), and (4) the
language lesson and feedback.
1 INTRODUCTION
In university, students majoring in English Language
Teaching is necessary to master all English language
skills including listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. In Indonesia, mostly, in the first and second
year of their study, students received courses that
help them to master those four skills before they
learned theoretical and practical knowledge in
pedagogy.
In this present study, the subject of the research
were multicultural students who came from different
educational backgrounds. Some students received
English lesson from the elementary level, yet some
others were not. Students outside Java mostly
received English lesson from the Junior High School
level. Learning English in Indonesia, in Elementary
and Secondary level mostly directed to give students
strong basis on learning language components
including vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Whereas in Senior High school level students start
practicing developing their English four skills,
including speaking. Students who did not receive
strong basic English lesson felt not confident and
tended to be unwilling to speak.
Students’ willingness to speak is one of the
paramount aspects in teaching and learning, yet
current practice in teaching and learning neglecting
students’ perception on the situation in which they
are willing to speak. This study is intended to unveil
students’ voice of what makes them willing to speak
by creating comfortable English-speaking classroom
situation. Since students were multicultural and
came from different educational background, the
concept of what is comfortable may be various.
Students’ voice is essential to reveal as the
consideration in designing materials and
consideration implementing certain teaching
technique.
The challenge students face in speaking is the
willingness to speak which is mostly influence by
their level of confidence. Students feel confident
when they are trained to speaking English at the very
beginning, as in Osterman (2014). Osterman (2014)
conducted study about Japanese University
Students’ willingness to speak English in class. He
concluded that the earlier students start to do oral
English communication practices, the better their
performances are. Grammar-based learning is less
helpful for students to practice in speaking class.
Riasati (2012) investigated EFL learners’
perception of factors influence willingness to speak
522
Lutviana, R., Weganofa, R., Liskinasih, A. and Jawas, U.
EFL Students’ Perception on Factors Influencing Willingness to Speak in Multicultural Classroom.
In Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities (ANCOSH 2018) - Revitalization of Local Wisdom in Global and Competitive Era, pages 522-526
ISBN: 978-989-758-343-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

English. The subject of the research was Iranian EFL
learners. He concluded that there were several
factors to contribute students’ willingness to speak,
such as task type, topic of discussion, interlocutor,
teacher, class atmosphere, personality and self-
perceived speaking ability.
Al-Jamal and Al-Jamal (2014) conducted survey
to 566 undergraduate Jordanian students of English
language literature to investigate their difficulties in
performing speaking tasks. By analyzing
questionnaire and interviews they drew conclusion
that factors contribute students’ difficulties in
speaking were communication in L1, the large class,
and lack of time.
Cutrone (2009) investigating the effects of
language anxiety to Japanese EFL learners in
performing speaking tasks. The causes of students’
anxiety were communication apprehension, social
evaluation, and inter-learner competition. EFL
teachers in Japan strive towards making their
classrooms more intimate (i.e., less formal), and
move away from the evaluation paradigm, which
seems ingrained in the values of Japanese society.
There are many studies concerning factors that
make students willing to speak English in class
where most of them are generally come from the
same cultural background, yet another factor that is
the multicultural background remains unexplored.
This study is aimed at exploring EFL students’
perception on factors influencing willingness to
speak in multicultural classroom.
Students who learned speaking in multicultural
classroom would experience benefits as well as
challenges. The benefit is that they have the
opportunity to develop knowledge and experience to
communicate with people from various cultural
background. The challenge is students needed to
adapt themselves to communicate with people from
different culture, that sometimes deal with
miscommunication and cultural shock. “Higher
education needs to develop mechanisms to prepare
people for intercultural encounters and to provide
pathways to solutions for problems that arise”
(Krawjeski, 2011).
Krawjeski (2011) noted that personal factors and
circumstantial factors influence much on developing
students’ multicultural competence. Deardorff
(2006; 2009: 33) developed intercultural competence
model that consisted of attitudes (respect, openness,
curiosity and discovery), knowledge (Cultural self-
awareness, deep cultural knowledge, otherworld
views, sociolinguistic awareness), desired internal
outcome (adaptability, flexibility, ethno-relative
view, empathy), and desired external outcome
(Effective and appropriate communication &
behaviour in an intercultural situation). In this case,
in multicultural classroom, the learning situation is
different from classroom in which students mostly
from the same cultural background. Thus, this
present study would explore the effect of
multicultural factors on students’ perception of
willingness to speak.
2 METHODOLOGY
This study is descriptive qualitative research in
which the purpose is to reveal EFL students’
perception on factors influencing willingness to
speak in multicultural classroom. The subject of the
research was 33 ELT students majoring in English
education who were in the third semester and took
Academic Speaking course. Students came from
different cultural backgrounds, those were Java (20
students), Sumba (8 students), Borneo (3 students),
Sundanese (1 student) and Papua (1 student). The
instruments used in this study were interview,
observation. The data were collected and recorded
on the checklists and document analysis. The
procedure used in observation was narrative
summary, while the interview was semi-structured
interview.
3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
The data were derived from several research
instruments including observation, students’ task
performance, and interview. The researcher was also
the instructor of the Academic Speaking course. The
observation was done while she was teaching
students. The instructor observed students’
behaviour, especially what made students willing to
speak without any fear in speaking. Richards and
Farrell (2011) notice that in doing classroom
observation, the instructor should consider the nature
and the focus of classroom observation. The nature
of observation is when students performing tasks in
Academic Speaking classes, from the third meeting
until the seventh meeting. The focus of observation
is students’ response and performance during they
performed speaking task. The result of observation
was described in the following:
EFL Students’ Perception on Factors Influencing Willingness to Speak in Multicultural Classroom
523

3.1 Observation: Narrative Summary
3.1.1 Meeting 3
In meeting 3 students were given task to make a
story based on the 3 keywords they have given a
piece of paper. The task was given individually, yet
most students got difficulties (they took long time to
arrange the sentences into stories), so the instructor
assigned them to make a group to do the task. In
group students perform better, they can make a good
and logical story in a short time. Students were
expected to present the story; each student contribute
1 sentence. In this case, all students participate to
speak but about 12 students were afraid and shy to
speak even though they were reading the text.
3.1.2 Meeting 4
In meeting 4 the instructor applied guessing game to
students in order to make them to produce sentences.
The game was played in a group competition. 1
group consisted 4 members. 1 member of group
came in front of class to guess the words, while the 3
members gave clue of a word they guess. They were
given 1 minute to guess the word. After the group
finished guessing 1 word, they change the role, the
person who came in front of class became the
member who gave the clue, and one member became
the person who came in front of class to guess. By
playing this game, students felt more enthusiastic.
Students who were silent and shy began to produce
utterances, regardless the errors they made, they
enjoy the game.
3.1.3 Meeting 5
In meeting 5 the instructor gave students task to
perform talk show. The talk show was like reality
show in TV program that discuss about certain topic,
such as fashion, music, health, culinary, etc.
Students were divided into groups, consisted of 4
members, 3 students acted like the expert that would
become the guest star in the show, and 1 person
became the host or the master of ceremony of the
program. The students were given freedom to
choose the topic they wanted to discuss on talk
show. They were given 20 minutes for the talk show,
after that the audience (students who were not
perform on talk show) could ask questions about the
topic they discuss. Most of the students participate in
talk show, students who usually kept silent asked
questions to the guest star. Besides, students who
were shy and not motivated to speak, they tried to be
better guest star by speaking English more. Most
students were excited to follow the show because the
topic and the content of the show were about things
that they liked.
3.1.4 Meeting 6
In meeting 6, students did debate. Students were
divided into groups that consisted of three students,
and each student have their own task: as the first
speaker, the second, and the third speaker. There
were six groups, and they were presented with three
debatable issues, for example “online game should
be banned”, “young marriage should be legalized”
and “full day school”. One issue should be presented
by two groups; one group as the pro group, while the
other as the contra group. Before doing debate,
students were given time to study the materials. The
debate run well for the group which member were
active and liked to talk, conversely, the debate did
not run well when most member of the group were
students who were hard for them to express their
idea. They needed more time to rearrange the words
before they expressed their opinion. They confessed
that they needed more vocabulary and grammatical
lesson to make them comfortable in speaking.
3.1.5 Meeting 7
In meeting 7, the instructor asked students to
conduct mini survey about certain topics, those were
facility, education, economy, culinary, and
technology. Students were given the material about
how to conduct survey including the steps, how to
develop mini questionnaire, and how to present the
result of the survey. After doing survey, the next
step was students have to present the result of the
survey individually, in front of the instructor only,
without other audiences. Next, after presentation,
students were interviewed. In doing this assignment,
most student at first thought that this assignment
were hard since it dealt with finding factual data by
interviewing and asking many people about topic
they developed. However, when presenting the
result of interview, students felt excited.
During the teaching and learning activities in
classroom from meeting 3 to meeting 6, students
showed different attitude to form the group in group
work project. In meeting 3 and meeting 4 students
liked to choose the group member based on their
origin, since they felt comfortable working with
people who came from the similar cultural
background. However, the way students chose group
member in group project would hinder their ability
to communicate in real society where
multiculturalism did exist. Therefore, since meeting
5 the instructor set the member of group in doing
group work project. The new group consisted of
ANCOSH 2018 - Annual Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities
524

students who came from the different cultural
background. At the beginning it was hard for the
students to cope with friends who came from
different cultural background, but in doing group
project together made them realized that they could
work under cultural differences and they could still
perform better.
3.2 Interview
The interview was administrated in meeting 8 after
the midterm exam. The purpose of the interview was
to find data of students’ perception on factors
influencing willingness to speak in multicultural
classroom by asking them several questions about
what they felt after doing several speaking tasks
from the meeting 3 to meeting 7. The instructor was
the interviewer while students was the interviewee,
in this case students felt free and comfortable
speaking with the instructor. When interviewing
students, the instructor created comfortable
situations in which she used informal language.
Table 1: The Summary of the result of questionnaire.
No Questions Answers
1. How do you feel speaking in
class? What makes you
comfortable in speaking?
- I feel enjoy, I like the task, especially talk show and
presentation. The choice of topic is free, I like it. I get many
benefits, learning something new and I get new materials also.
- excited because, the lecturer always motivated to speak better.
Give correction and vocabulary lesson after task so that I know
my weakness
- happy, the lecturer always motivates us to do improvement in
speaking. I Like all assignment, especially survey and TV
reporter because this assignment make us communicate with
many friends and people. At first I think that this assignment is
hard but in the end I began to enjoy it, I get many experiences
since this is the first time for me to interview someone and the
first time to become TV reporter.
- I feel comfortable when speaking only with the lecturer, not in
front of friends
- Feel fun, because not so many materials to study, yet we have
various activities to speak in front of the class.
- I feel enjoy. I like the assignment the lecturer create for us,
especially survey, long before I join this class I want to make
survey, but I do not know how. In this class I learned how to
conduct survey, from making questionnaire, doing interview,
and present it. It is very useful.
- I feel comfortable when all of my friend participated in speaking
activity, I do not like when only several students speak in class.
- I feel comfortable when speaking with my friends who come
from the same region.
2. What made you afraid speaking
English in class?
- When I do not know the words in English and I feel like lost in a
conversation.
- I am afraid speaking in English because I do not have English
basic knowledge like vocabulary and grammar. I started learning
English in Senior High School while most of my friends started
from Elementary School that is why their English is better.
Sometimes I feel not confident when s
p
eakin
g
with them.
The researcher asked two questions to 33
students, the answers in Table 1 were the summary
of 33 students’ answers. The first question on the
interview was about students’ feeling and factor that
made them comfortable in speaking so that made
them willing to speak. By summarizing students’
answers to the interview, it could be concluded that
the factors that made students willing to speak
include: task, topic in speaking, motivation, the
friends as well as partner in speaking, and the
amount of materials and activities in speaking.
The design of speaking tasks is the first factor
that made students willing to speak. Most students
liked the tasks that were varied and required them to
practice the language to carry on communication.
Besides, the task was based on the real-life
experience so that students felt the benefits of the
task, such as survey and TV reporter. In the future
EFL Students’ Perception on Factors Influencing Willingness to Speak in Multicultural Classroom
525

students would need the skill to conduct survey or to
report something for society.
Related to the task, the amount of materials and
activities in speaking also influenced students’
willingness to speak. Students’ mostly liked the task
that required them more time to practice language
rather than to study certain materials. They also
expected to give more time to prepare before
performing the task. The materials given should be
about language lesson that supported their
performance in speaking, such as basic vocabulary
and grammar.
Moreover, topics in speaking also influenced
students’ willingness to speak. Students really
enjoyed talking about the topics they liked and
related to their hobby, such as art (drawing, cooking,
embroider, etc.). Besides, students were also excited
to discuss the up to date topics among youth such as
make up, fashion, and photography.
Besides task, students were also need motivation
to make them kept learning and not gave up when
they found difficulties in performing the task. The
motivation that was given by the instructor was by
encouraging students not to give up and be brave
when speaking. It was also influenced by how the
instructor treated students’ mistakes and error when
speaking. In this case the instructor tolerated
students’ errors and mistakes and gave the feedback
at the after the activity not during the activity to
make students focus and enjoy the speaking activity.
Additionally, the instructor was also motivated
students when she gave some feedback and
correction in students’ speaking so that students can
learn from mistakes and errors they made.
Another factor that influenced students’
willingness to speak was the interlocutor, in this case
the partner in speaking and the characteristics of
classmates. Students felt more comfortable when
speaking face to face with one person rather than
speaking in front of many people. Students also
expected to have classmate who also active in
speaking. Besides, students felt more comfortable in
speaking with people from the same cultural
background.
In addition, it is also important to find factors of
students’ willingness to speak from other
perspective, that is the factors that made students
afraid to speak. Based on the result of interview, it
could be concluded that students lack of knowledge
in basic vocabulary and grammar. This factor
sometimes made them lost in conversation and
presentation so that they were unwilling to speak.
Nation (2001) stated that vocabulary used in
productive skill such as speaking is harder to learn
than in receptive skill. Therefore, it is also important
for the instructor to give spoken vocabulary and
grammatical knowledge in speaking class.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Regarding the result of data analysis derived from
interview and observation, it could be concluded that
factors that influenced student’s willingness to speak
were: (1) the task (including the design of the task,
the amount of the task, and the topic of the task), (2)
motivation from both lecturer as well as classmates,
(3) the interlocutor and the types of speaking
interaction (face to face or by group), and (4) the
language lesson and feedback. It is suggested for the
instructor to develop speaking task that enables
students more time to practice speaking with the
topic that they like most. It is also important for the
instructor to build positive relationship with the
students and among the students to motivate each
other and to be open speaking with people from
different culture. Moreover, the instructor should
give language lesson that is useful for speaking skill
and give indirect feedback after the lesson.
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