EFL students’ Intercultural Willingness to Communicate through Intergenerational Storytelling
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Intercultural communication is shaped by language, emotion, and human connection. This study examines how intergenerational storytelling influences Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language students’ intercultural willingness to communicate. A qualitative design with semi-structured interviews was conducted with fifteen Vietnamese students studying abroad. Findings show that willingness to communicate developed through emotional engagement and narrative immersion rather than linguistic confidence alone. Students shifted from avoidance to active and self-initiated communication when they felt emotionally connected to stories. Storytelling reduced cultural stereotypes and fostered both cognitive and emotional empathy through lived experiences. Communication anxiety decreased due to supportive interaction, visual scaffolding, and balanced relational power. The study suggests that storytelling creates emotional safety and meaningful intercultural contact. It recommends integrating narrative-based intercultural activities into English as a Foreign Language pedagogy to enhance real-world communication readiness.
Article Details
Section
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Journal of Philology and Educational Sciences is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY-4.0).
How to Cite
References
Aladini, A., & Gheisari, A. (2025). Exploring motivation, willingness to communicate, and intercultural competence development in digital language exchanges: An integrative theoretical approach. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 20, 100819, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2025.100819
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.
Alterio, M., & McDrury, J. (2003). Learning through storytelling in higher education: Using reflection and experience to improve learning. Routledge, doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203416655
Álvarez Valencia, J. A., & Michelson, K. (2023). A design perspective on intercultural communication in second/foreign language education. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 16(4), 399-418, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2022.2066152
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101, doi: https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Brinkmann, S., & Kvale, S. (2014). InterViews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21, doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/448619
Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence: Revisited. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800410251
Campbell, N. (2016). Ethnocentrism and intercultural willingness to communicate-A study of New Zealand management students. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 16(1), 1-15, doi: https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v16i1.707
Charise, A., Pang, C., & Khalfan, K. A. (2022). What is intergenerational storytelling? Defining the critical issues for aging research in the humanities. Journal of Medical Humanities, 43(4), 615-637, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09735-4
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Dörnyei, Z. (2007). Research methods in applied linguistics: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. Oxford University Press, doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/asp.294
Dörnyei, Z., & Kormos, J. (2000). The role of individual and social variables in oral task performance. Language Teaching Research, 4(3), 275-300, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/136216880000400305
Elahi Shirvan, M., Khajavy, G. H., MacIntyre, P. D., & Taherian, T. (2019). A meta-analysis of L2 willingness to communicate and its three high-evidence correlates. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 48(6), 1241-1267, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-019-09656-9
Fathi, J., Zou, D., & Zhaleh, K. (2025). Promoting intercultural communicative competence and willingness to communicate in EFL learners through virtual reality: a mixed-methods examination. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1-44, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2025.2496827
God, Y. T., & Zhang, H. (2019). Intercultural challenges, intracultural practices: How Chinese and Australian students understand and experience intercultural communication at an Australian university. Higher Education, 78(2), 305-322, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0344-0
Hofman-Bergholm, M. (2022). Storytelling as an educational tool in sustainable education. Sustainability, 14(5), 2946, doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052946
Hosseini Fatemi, A., Khajavy, G. H., & Choi, C. W. (2016). Testing a model of intercultural willingness to communicate based on ethnocentrism, ambiguity tolerance and sensation seeking: The role of learning English in Iran. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 45(4), 304-318, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2016.1190776
Iswandari, Y. A., & Ardi, P. (2022). Intercultural communicative competence in EFL Setting: A systematic review. rEFLections, 29(2), 361-380, doi: https://doi.org/10.61508/refl.v29i2.260249
Jiang, Y., & Wu, L. (2026). Multilingualism, multicultural personality, and foreign language anxiety as predictors of Chinese international students’ intercultural willingness to communicate. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 47(3), 1629-1645, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2024.2439929
Kassing, J. W. (1997). Development of the intercultural willingness to communicate scale. Communication Research Reports, 14(4), 399-407, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08824099709388683
Lee, J. S., & Hsieh, J. C. (2019). Affective variables and willingness to communicate of EFL learners in in-class, out-of-class, and digital contexts. System, 82, 63-73, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2019.03.002
Lee, J. S., & Lee, K. (2020). Affective factors, virtual intercultural experiences, and L2 willingness to communicate in in-class, out-of-class, and digital settings. Language Teaching Research, 24(6), 813-833, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168819831408
Lee, J. S., Lee, K., & Chen Hsieh, J. (2022). Understanding willingness to communicate in L2 between Korean and Taiwanese students. Language Teaching Research, 26(3), 455-476, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168819890825
Li, C., Hu, J., Hengeveld, B., & Hummels, C. (2019). Story-Me: Design of a system to support intergenerational storytelling and preservation for older adults. In DIS ’19 Companion: Companion publication of the 2019 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 245–250). Association for Computing Machinery. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3301019.3323902
Lin, Y., & Rancer, A. S. (2003a). Ethnocentrism, intercultural communication apprehension, intercultural willingness‐to‐communicate, and intentions to participate in an intercultural dialogue program: Testing a proposed model. Communication Research Reports, 20(1), 62-72, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08824090309388800
Lin, Y., & Rancer, A. S. (2003b). Sex differences in intercultural communication apprehension, ethnocentrism, and intercultural willingness to communicate. Psychological Reports, 92(1), 195-200, doi: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.2003.92.1.195
Logan, S., Steel, Z., & Hunt, C. (2015). Investigating the effect of anxiety, uncertainty and ethnocentrism on willingness to interact in an intercultural communication. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(1), 39-52, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022114555762
Lu, Y., & Hsu, C. F. (2008). Willingness to communicate in intercultural interactions between Chinese and Americans. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 37(2), 75-88, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475750802533356
Luu, P. D. (2026). Challenges and strategies of intercultural willingness to communicate among English majors at a Vietnamese public university. TNU Journal of Science and Technology, 231(04), 422 – 429, doi: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.13650
MacIntyre, P. D., Clément, R., Dörnyei, Z., & Noels, K. A. (1998). Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: A situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation. The Modern Language Journal, 82(4), 545-562, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1998.tb05543.x
Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2015). Second Language Research: Methodology and Design (2nd ed.). Routledge, doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315750606
Munezane, Y. (2021). A new model of intercultural communicative competence: Bridging language classrooms and intercultural communicative contexts. Studies in Higher Education, 46(8), 1664-1681, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1698537
Nguyen, T. T. P., & Phillips, L. G. (2025). How storytelling can work as a pedagogy to facilitate children’s English as a foreign language learning. Language Teaching Research, 29(7), 3080-3103, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/13621688221135481
Patton, M. Q. (2014). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2005). Allport’s intergroup contact hypothesis: Its history and influence. In J. F. Dovidio, P. Glick, & L. A. Rudman (Eds.), On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport (pp. 262–277). Blackwell Publishing, doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773963.ch16
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751-783, doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751
Pham, V. T. T., & Pham, A. T. (2022). An assessment of students’ intercultural competence in public and private universities in Vietnam. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 18(1), 34-44, https://www.jlls.org/index.php/jlls/article/view/3385/991
Rahiem, M. D. (2021). Storytelling in early childhood education: Time to go digital. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 15(1), 1-20, doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-021-00081-x
Roach, K. D., & Olaniran, B. A. (2001). Intercultural willingness to communicate and communication anxiety in international teaching assistants. Communication Research Reports, 18(1), 26–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824090109384779
Sljivic, H., Sutherland, I., Stannard, C., Ioppolo, C., & Morrisby, C. (2022). Changing attitudes towards older adults: Eliciting empathy through digital storytelling. Gerontology & Geriatrics Education, 43(3), 360-373, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02701960.2021.1900838
Tracy, S. J. (2019). Qualitative research methods: Collecting evidence, crafting analysis, communicating impact (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Vu, N. T. (2022). Vietnamese international students in offshore programs: Engagement in intercultural communicative competence and intercultural sensitivity. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 51(3), 229-253, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2021.1970612
Vu, N. T., & Dinh, H. (2022). College-level students’ development of intercultural communicative competence: a quantitative study in Vietnam. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 51(2), 208-227, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2021.1893207
Wang, Y. F., & Cionea, I. A. (2024). Am I incompetent or just afraid? Competence and apprehension as predictors of intercultural willingness to communicate. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 17(2), 211-228, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2024.2318034
Yin, R. K. (2017). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Yousaf, M., Ahmad, M., Ji, D., Huang, D., & Raza, S. H. (2022). A cross-cultural comparison of ethnocentrism and the intercultural willingness to communicate between two collectivistic cultures. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-12, doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21179-3