On the Role of Willingness to Communicate and Critical Thinking in Receptive/Productive Lexical Knowledge of Gifted and Non-Gifted EFL Learners

TWillingness to Communicate (WTC) and vocabulary development have unanimously been considered as two essential goals of language pedagogy as they directly contribute to the ultimate purpose of language learning that is communicative competence development. This study looked into the role of Willingness to Communicate (WTC), as an individual differences construct, in the EFL learners' receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to investigate whether or not the learners' WTC degree significantly affected their receptive/productive lexical knowledge. To this end, 112 EFL learners were selected as the participants of the study, and they were asked to sit for three instruments: a WTC questionnaire, a receptive lexical knowledge test, and a productive lexical knowledge test. Having gathered and analyzed the data through descriptive statistics and an independent samples t-test, the researchers found out that there was no significant difference between the high and low WTC learners in terms of their receptive lexical knowledge. However, a significant difference was observed between high and low WTC learners in terms of their productive vocabulary knowledge. The pedagogical implications of the study were also discussed.