The role of individual and social variables in oral task performance

TLDR

Students’ verbal behavior in oral tasks is partly driven by non‑linguistic and non‑cognitive factors, suggesting a fruitful extension of task‑based research paradigms. This data‑based study examined how affective and social variables influence foreign‑language learners’ engagement in oral argumentative tasks. The study measured L2 motivation, group cohesiveness, intermember relations, proficiency, and L1 willingness to communicate as independent variables, and assessed speech quantity and turn‑taking in both L1 and L2 as dependent variables. Results reveal a multi‑level construct in which certain independent variables affect task engagement only under specific conditions, highlighting complex interrelationships among the variables.

Abstract

This paper reports on a data-based study in which we explored - as part of a larger-scale British-Hungarian research project - the effects of a number of affective and social variables on foreign language (L2) learners’ engagement in oral argumentative tasks. The assumption underlying the investigation was that students’ verbal behaviour in oral task situations is partly determined by a number of non-linguistic and non-cognitive factors whose examination may constitute a potentially fruitful extension of existing task-based research paradigms. The independent variables in the study included various aspects of L2 motivation and several factors characterizing the learner groups the participating students were members of (such as group cohesiveness and intermember relations), as well as the learners’ L2 proficiency and ‘willingness to communicate’ in their L1. The dependent variables involved objective measures of the students’ language output in two oral argumentative tasks (one in the learners’ L1, the other in their L2): the quantity of speech and the number of turns produced by the speakers. The results provide insights into the interrelationship of the multiple variables determining the learners’ task engagement, and suggest a multi-level construct whereby some independent variables only come into force when certain conditions have been met.