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Foreign language instructors and course developers increasingly must consider pedagogically sound approaches for instruction within partially or fully online teaching contexts. Developing communicative competence by taking a communicative approach to programme goals remains the priority in many EFL programmes, and encouraging student willingness to engage in classroom communication is highly important for engaging learning processes (MacIntyre, 2020). Furthermore, previous studies have shown that face-to-face (F2F) classroom environmental variables, such as constructive teacher support, engaging tasks and positive student group experiences, remain important predictors for encouraging student willingness to communicate (WtC) (Peng, 2012, 2014, 2015; Peng & Woodrow, 2010). Understanding these classroom variables is important for teaching practitioners as these are malleable contextual aspects that are under course instructors’ and developers’ control. In addition, as the classroom is often the primary environment for L2 communication for many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students (Peng, 2013), it is critical that practitioners carefully consider how it best be structured to facilitate pedagogically beneficial language engagement.
Despite ongoing improvements and integration of computer assisted language learning (CALL) technologies into teaching (Chapelle & Sauro, 2017), little, if any, previous research has examined the impact of classroom environmental variables on in-class student WtC in fully online course contexts (Gacs et al., 2020). However, many EFL instructors and students experienced these types of fully online environments during the COVID-19 pandemic, and future similar situations, together with continuing technology developments, appear likely to make fully online teaching more prevalent in future. This area of research requires further investigation if future online programmes are to facilitate and engage student WtC effectively. The current study aimed to investigate this area by examining classroom environmental variables (i.e., teacher support, task orientation, and student group cohesiveness), motivational variables and the related in-class WtC of EFL students within a fully online 3-week intensive English programme held at a Macau university. The results were compared to previous studies in F2F contexts to broaden our understanding of the importance of these variables for online and blended EFL courses.