Comparing effects of issue logs and linked skills on L2 oral fluency development in media-related English courses

DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L319.457

Authors: Dr. Sakae Onoda

Abstract: This paper compares the effects of issue log tasks versus linked-skills tasks on L2 oral fluency development in media-related English courses. L2 literature shows that issue logs and linked skills can improve oral fluency, accuracy, and linguistic complexity, which in turn strengthen intrinsic motivation and help achieve the linguistic, affective, and social goals of L2 learning, which are critical in today's globalized society, which relies heavily on social media. These fluency development tasks were employed over four months in contentbased university English classes focusing on social issues reported in social media. Results show that oral fluency gains were greater with issue log tasks than with linked-skills tasks. This indicates that motivation plays an important role in promoting active engagement in speech production, repetition, and deep processing, which in turn improves oral fluency. Pedagogical implications as well as the limitations of the findings are also discussed.

Keywords: issue logs; linked skills; L2 oral fluency; intrinsic motivation; repetition; deep processing