Strategy Use in Oral Communication with Competent Synthesis and Complex Interaction

Area of Science:

• Second Language Acquisition
• Applied Linguistics
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Strategy use is crucial for academic success and problem-solving in globalized knowledge economies.
• Skills like information synthesis and elaborating viewpoints are vital in integrated group discussions.
• Empirical evidence on strategy use in such tasks, particularly in a second language (L2) context, is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between strategy use and task performance in an L2 integrated group discussion.
• To identify and validate categories of strategies employed during the task.
• To determine which specific strategies significantly predict oral production quality and task achievement.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 171 Hong Kong undergraduate students for an integrated group discussion task in Putonghua (L2).
• Administered a validated strategy use inventory specific to the integrated group discussion task.
• Analyzed student performances and responses using multiple statistical methods.

Main Results:

• Five strategy categories were identified: active engagement, non-verbal, synthesis, clarification, and affective.
• These strategies collectively predicted 19.9% of the variation in task performance, enhancing oral production quality.
• Synthesis and active engagement strategies were significantly associated with task performance; high performers used these more frequently.

Conclusions:

• Specific strategies, particularly synthesis and active engagement, are significant predictors of success in L2 integrated group discussions.
• The findings highlight the importance of developing these strategies for improved L2 oral communication competence.
• The study contributes novel insights into oral communication strategy inventories by identifying rarely found, impactful strategies.