The impact of SEL-based approach on EFL pre-service teachers' willingness to communicate in English
4th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PSYCHOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS AND LEARNERS (ICPLTL-2025), İstanbul, Türkiye, 17 - 18 Ekim 2025, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: İstanbul
- Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
- Marmara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is defined as the acquisition of the social and emotional skills such as recognizing and managing emotional states in a constructive manner, establishing positive relationships with others, making responsible decisions and developing empathy and care for others as well as for oneself. SEL holds an important place in 21st-century education in which emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills are at the forefront of enriching the learning experience. SEL aims to foster five fundamental competencies which are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, responsible decision-making and relationship skills to support learners’ social and emotional development as well as their willingness to speak in English. Besides, SEL utilizes a learner-centered approach in order to support learners’ active participation in the learning process and their collaborative skills for effective communication. Willingness to communicate (WTC) in L2, which is English for the case, refers to the readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using L2. WTC is of critical importance to understanding learners’ psychology towards communication and engagement in class. Given the role of emotions and social dynamics in language learning, the current study deals with integrating SEL techniques into a skills-based undergraduate course instruction to examine whether this intervention increases EFL pre-service teachers’ willingness to speak in English. This study investigates the impact of an SEL-based teaching approach on EFL pre-service teachers’ willingness to communicate in English. A quasi-experimental research design was employed. The data were collected through the Willingness to Communicate Scale (McCroskey, 1992) and focus group interviews before and after the intervention. Both qualitative and quantitative findings indicate that SEL-enriched instruction significantly enhanced pre-service English teachers’ willingness to engage in communication in English while creating a supportive classroom environment for the majority of them.
Keywords: EFL pre-service teachers, social and emotional learning, willingness to communicate in English