Grammatical Complexity as a Hidden Barrier Shaping Junior High School Students' Willingness to Communicate in English

This study investigates grammatical complexity as a hidden barrier shaping
students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) in English among seventh-grade
students at SMPN 17 Medan. The study aimed to explore how grammatical
complexity influences students’ communication behavior and willingness to
participate in English-speaking activities. A descriptive qualitative design with an
interpretive phenomenological approach was employed. The participants were 33
students of class VII-1 at SMPN 17 Medan. Data were collected through semistructured
interviews, a Likert-scale questionnaire, and documentation. Five
students were selected for in-depth interviews using purposive sampling.
Qualitative data were analyzed using the interactive model of Miles, Huberman,
and Saldaña (2014), while questionnaire data were analyzed using descriptive
statistics and mean scores. The findings revealed that grammatical complexity
functions as a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral barrier to students’ willingness
to communicate. Students experienced difficulties in using tenses, subject–verb
agreement, sentence structure, and word order during speaking activities. These
difficulties increased cognitive load and caused students to focus more on
grammatical accuracy than on expressing their ideas. The findings also showed that
fear of making grammatical mistakes, anxiety, and concern about negative
evaluation reduced students’ confidence and participation in classroom
communication. Consequently, many students hesitated to speak, overthought
grammatical rules, and sometimes avoided communication altogether.
Grammatical complexity significantly influences students’ willingness to
communicate in English by affecting their confidence, anxiety levels, and speaking
behavior. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to create supportive learning
environments and communication-oriented activities that help students overcome
fear of grammatical mistakes and improve their confidence in using English.