Oral Proficiency and Language Learning Strategies: A Preliminary Effort to Find Learner Internal Factors that Enhance Oral Proficiency of Second Language Learners

The purpose of this study was to test empirical sustainability of three major positions about the nature of internal linguistic input processing that is associated with the enhancement of second language learnings’ oral proficiency. These three positions are what may be called an implicit-only position, an explicit-only position, and a weak interface position, respectively. An implicit-only position asserts that input processing for oral proficiency is exclusively implicit. An explicit-only position asserts that it is exclusively explicit. A weak interface position asserts that the processing is mainly implicit even though explicit processing plays a limited but important role in oral proficiency enhancement. These three positions make distinct predictions about the relationship between oral proficiency and the use of two kinds of language learning strategies (i.e., cognitive strategies and functional-use strategies). An implicit-only position predicts that oral proficiency has zero correlation to cognitive strategies while it has a positive correlation to functional-use strategies. An explicit-only position predicts that oral proficiency has a positive correlation to both cognitive and functional-use strategies. A weak interface position predicts that oral proficiency has a slightly positive correlation to cognitive strategies while it has a positive correlation to functional-use strategies. By using these predictions as research hypotheses, this study tested the empirical sustainability of the three positions. The nature of internal linguistic input processing that is associated with the enhancement of oral proficiency could be best inferred based on a position that would be empirically verified by this hypothesis testing. This knowledge is mandatory to identify the internal learning process by which second language learning come to acquire oral proficiency.

To test the hypotheses, 175 non-native English speaker subjects were selected by stratified random sampling from UTK (The University of Tennessee at Knoxville) international graduate students who lived in four UTK apartment complexes, and whose first language was Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. To measure the subjects’ use of the above two kinds of strategies, 31 items were selected from the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, Version for English Speakers Learning a New Language (Oxford, 1990). To measure the subjects’ English oral proficiency, a 20-item oral proficiency scale was created for this study. These two tools comprised a questionnaire together with several demographic items. Data were collected by mail survey. As many as 124 subjects returned the questionnaire. Four subjects turned out not to belong to the population. The return rate was thus 72.5%.

By factoring the respondents’ answers on the 31 strategy items using the principal axes method with the Varimax rotation, cognitive strategies and functional-use strategies were empirically defined. Cognitive strategies were defined as a combination of two strategy categories that emerged from the factor analysis (i.e., structural interest and transfer caution). Functional-use strategies were defined as a combination of three strategy categories that also emerged from the same analysis (i.e., idiom use, naturalistic exposure, and English for fun). The validity and the reliability of the oral proficiency scale were checked. Then, multiple R’s were computed between oral proficiency and each of these five categories. All the three functional-use strategy categories showed a medium correlation to oral proficiency (R’s between .564 and .622). The two cognitive strategy categories showed a small correlation to oral proficiency (R’s of .300 and .356). This result matched the prediction made by a weak interface position. It was concluded that the nature of internal linguistic input processing that was associated with the enhancement of the respondents’ oral proficiency was mainly implicit. At the same time, explicit learning of discrete grammatical items was concluded to play a limited but important role in the enhancement of the respondents’ English oral proficiency.