The Role of Perceived Need-Supportive Teaching in Promoting Willingness to Communicate in EFL: Variable-and Person-Centered Examinations of Self-Determination Theory among Chinese High School Students

While willingness to communicate (WTC) is crucial for success in learning English as a foreign language (EFL), many Chinese EFL students prioritize test performance over communication skills, which hampers their language learning outcomes. Self-determination theory suggests that need-supportive teaching can improve students' motivation by satisfying their needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, limited research has examined how need-supportive teaching facilitates Chinese EFL learners' WTC through enhanced self-determined motivation. Thus, this study aimed to bridge this gap using a novel combined methodology to offer complementary perspectives. Specifically, the variable-centered approach was used to reveal the mechanism by which need-supportive teaching improves WTC, while the person-centered approach was used to categorize Chinese EFL learners for practical application of these insights. The questionnaire survey was completed by 586 Chinese 10th graders. Bootstrap modeling demonstrated that autonomous motivation fully mediated the positive impact of perceived competence support and partially mediated the positive effect of perceived relatedness support on WTC, whereas perceived autonomy support and controlled motivation did not significantly influence WTC. Latent profile analysis identified three balanced subgroups characterized as overall low support, overall medium support, and overall high support, respectively, among which the high-support profile had the highest WTC. Research implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.