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Quality and quantity of oral participation and English proficiency gains

Thomas Delaney
Language Teaching Research 2012 16: 467
DOI: 10.1177/1362168812455586

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455586
2012
LTR16410.1177/1362168812455586Language Teaching ResearchDelaney

LANGUAGE
TEACHING
Article RESEARCH

Language Teaching Research

Quality and quantity of oral

16(4) 467­–482
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.
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DOI: 10.1177/1362168812455586
proficiency gains ltr.sagepub.com

Thomas Delaney
University of Oregon, USA

Abstract
There are many reasons to believe that oral participation in the target language (TL) is beneficial for
classroom language learners. In addition to the prominence current second language acquisition
(SLA) theory gives to processes that assume learner production of the TL (e.g. negotiation of
meaning), teachers often view oral participation as a measure of learner involvement. Thus, it is
often assumed that learners who participate often are likely to make greater proficiency gains. This
correlational study examined this assumption by investigating the relationship between learners’
oral participation in classes for English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Japanese university and their
gains in TL proficiency. Results indicated that while the quality of learners’ participation (accuracy,
complexity, and fluency) was positively related to gains in TL ability, quantity of participation was
not. While not indicative of a cause–effect relationship, the results suggest that teachers might
wish to consider encouraging quality of participation as well as quantity.

Keywords
participation, proficiency gains, quality, quantity, accuracy, fluency, complexity, Japan, Japanese

I Introduction
‘The more you speak English, the faster you will learn.’ These words – taken from the
course description of a class for English as a second language – convey an attitude that is
common but that is surprisingly unsupported by the available research. Language teachers
generally view learner’s oral participation in class very positively. While many teachers
are probably aware of at least some of the theoretical arguments that support the impor-
tance of learners’ oral production for language learning, participation may be important to
teachers for other reasons as well. For instance, teachers may see participation as an indi-
cation of learners’ ‘receptivity’ to learning the target language (TL), the other students in

Corresponding author:
Thomas Delaney, American English Institute, Department of Linguistics, 107 Pacific Hall, 5212 University of
Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5212, USA
Email: tdelaney@uoregon.edu

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468 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

the class, and/or the teacher’s approach to teaching (Allwright and Bailey, 1991). Teachers
may even view participation as being indicative of an attractive personality or intelli-
gence. In other words, teachers probably have both pedagogical and emotional reasons for
wanting learners to actively participate. This emotional dimension helps explain why
some teachers find learners’ non-participation extremely upsetting.
However, before investing too much in the notion of ‘getting them to speak’, it seems
appropriate to investigate whether this assumption is justified. Thus, the present study
explores the relationship between class participation and gains in language ability. In
other words, is a strong emphasis on ‘getting them to speak’ justified?

II  Literature review

1  Theoretical support for oral participation
In the context of second or foreign language classes, oral participation may be defined as
speaking in the TL while engaging in instructional tasks or activities. Defined this way,
participation is an umbrella term under that may fall a number of processes thought to be
helpful for SLA.
Support for the efficacy of speaking in the TL for SLA can be found in perspectives
such as the Interaction Hypothesis (Long 1985, 1996), the Comprehensible Output
Hypothesis (Swain, 1985), skill acquisition theory (DeKeyser, 2007), depth of process-
ing models (Craik and Lockhart, 1972), Vygotskian sociocultural theory (see, for exam-
ple, Lantolf, 2000; Ohta, 2001), and Skehan’s dual-mode system (1998). Indeed, even
the Input Processing model (Van Patten, 2004), which is sometimes perceived to reject
the importance of output for language learning, does in fact recognize a significant role
for speaking. Although some researchers have questioned the necessity of speaking for
SLA (e.g. Krashen, 1985), the notion that speaking can be beneficial for SLA is a tenet
on which many SLA researchers agree. Oral participation may not be the only way
acquisition occurs, but it provides a milieu in which important SLA processes can take
place. Skehan (1998, pp. 16–19) summarizes the ways in which speaking can aid acqui-
sition. Oral production, he says, can help learners by:

1. Generating better input: Learner output helps interlocutors fine-tune their speech to make it
more comprehensible to the learner.
2. Forcing syntactic processing: Speaking forces learners to attend to syntax instead of just
semantic and strategic features.
3. Testing hypotheses: Speaking allows learners to elicit feedback on their current interlanguage.
4. Developing automaticity: Speaking is the only way in which ‘learners can go beyond
carefully constructed utterances and achieve some level of natural speed and rhythm’.
5. Developing discourse skills: Discourse skills, such as turn-taking, can ‘only be achieved by
actually participating in discourse’.
6. Developing a personal voice: If learners want to be able to say things that are important to
them, they must have ‘the opportunity to steer conversations along routes of interest...’

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Delaney 469

In sum, there is a great deal of theoretical support for the importance of oral
production. In classroom language learning, oral participation is generally where oral
production occurs. When added to the emotional reasons teachers have for desiring
learners’ participation, the emphasis placed on oral participation is not surprising. It is,
however, surprising that research on participation has produced mixed results.

2  Previous studies of participation and language learning

A great many studies examine the effects of specific pedagogical interventions (e.g. vari-
ous types of corrective feedback) on the use or acquisition of targeted lexical or gram-
matical structures. However, this type of study is rather different from the present study,
which examines the relationship of oral participation in general (i.e. production that does
not target specific grammatical or lexical features) to L2 proficiency in general. Perhaps
because oral participation may include a number of more specific processes or factors
(e.g. negotiation of meaning, modified output, etc.) that are thought to be beneficial for
SLA, few recent studies have examined participation qua participation.
Yet a number of earlier studies that examined the relationship between the quantity of
participation and language proficiency or achievement, seem to support the hypothesis
that participation is beneficial for language learning. Naiman et al. (1978) investigated
whether quantity of participation (measured as hand-raising and responding to the teach-
er’s questions) was related to performance on comprehension and imitation tests. Learners
who raised their hands and answered teachers’ questions more often outperformed learn-
ers who did so less frequently. Similarly, Strong (1983, 1984) found that quantity of par-
ticipation (high response rates) correlated with measures of grammar, pronunciation, and
vocabulary obtained during natural classroom and playground communication (i.e. not in
formal tests). More recently, Cameron and Epling (1989) found that pairs of learners were
more successful in completing problem-solving tasks when one or both of the partners
had been identified as an active participant (again, in terms of quantity) in class.
On the other hand, a number of other studies largely failed to find positive relation-
ships between quantity of participation and L2 proficiency or achievement. Seliger
(1977) investigated whether learners classified as ‘high input generators’ (those who
engaged in many interactions in the TL) did better on various measures of language
learning than ‘low input generators’. Seliger framed his results as strongly supporting
the notion that quantity of participation is positively related to language learning, even
though quantity of participation significantly correlated with only one of his three lan-
guage measures (an aural comprehension task) but not the others (cloze and structure
tests). When Day (1984) replicated Seliger’s study, no relationships were found between
active participation and test attainment. Furthermore, although Ely (1986), like Seliger,
emphasized the positive relationships between participation and language learning
measures, he largely failed to find them. Participation (number of utterances) only sig-
nificantly correlated with oral correctness on a story-retelling task in level 1 Spanish
classes. However, this was not the case in level 2 Spanish classes, nor was participation
significantly correlated with fluency on the story-retelling task or with correctness on a
written final exam.

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470 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

Furthermore, several studies found that those who participated infrequently or not at
all performed as well or even better on L2 learning or achievement measures than those
who participated more. For instance, Ellis (1984) investigated the number of times learn-
ers practiced a particular structure (when questions) and how much they improved in
being able to use it. While this type of participation is more specific than simply counting
turns or instances of hand-raising, it is still essentially a quantitative measure. His results
indicated that the ‘low interactors’ improved more than ‘high interactors’. Similarly,
Allwright (1980) found that learners who participated less made greater gains than the
learner who participated the most.
While the Ellis and Allwright studies suggested an advantage for ‘low interactors’
in learning a particular structure, other studies simply suggest a lack of an advantage
for those who participate more. Pica (1992) found no differences in comprehension
between learners who participated in interactions and those who simply observed.
Likewise, when Slimani (1992) investigated learners’ uptake of previously unknown
vocabulary, she found that learners who participated little or not at all often recalled as
many vocabulary items as learners who participated much more. Furthermore, learners
more often remembered items asked about or used by other learners, as opposed to the
teacher, suggesting that learners may actually benefit from the participation of other
learners. Moreover, Ellis et al. (1994) found that vocabulary acquisition and compre-
hension scores were not significantly different for learners who participated in interac-
tion and those who just listened.
It is important to note that it is not possible to make firm claims of a cause–effect
relationship (or lack of such a relationship) on the basis of correlational studies.
Nonetheless, these studies suggest that the relationship between participation and lan-
guage learning may not be as simple as it is sometimes assumed to be.
The theoretical perspectives cited earlier in this literature review strongly sug-
gest that some mechanisms that can occur during participation are important for
SLA. However, since previous studies have produced mixed results, it seems that
further research into the relationship between participation and language learning is
called for. It is possible that some of the inconsistent findings of previous research
result from two factors.
First, the ways in which participation has been operationalized have often been
incomplete (only looking at the quantity of participation) or not related to the types
of participation (e.g. hand-raising) supported by SLA theory. The other factor that
may have contributed to the mixed findings of previous research is that the lan-
guage measures used have varied greatly from study to study. Perhaps quiet atten-
tiveness is adequate for learning that translates into good scores on written tests, but
it seems unlikely to be adequate for producing the previously described benefits of
output enumerated by Skehan (1998). Therefore, studies that specifically examine
participation as oral production, operationalize it in a comprehensive manner (i.e.
as both quantity and quality), and use sophisticated linguistic measures are neces-
sary to clarify what relationships, if any, exist between participation and language
learning. The present study attempts do this by investigating the research question:
What is the relationship between oral participation in class and gains in English
ability?

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Delaney 471

III Method
1  Context
The study described in this article, which was part of a larger research project, took place
in the context of two intact level four ‘English Oral Communication’ classes at a univer-
sity in Japan. The researcher was also the teacher of these classes, which consisted of two
90-minute meetings each week for the duration of a 14-week semester.

2  Participants
The participants were 37 first-year Japanese university students between the ages of 17
and 19 years old. The group comprised 33 males and 4 females. By the time they partici-
pated in this study, the learners had all had at least six years of mostly traditional gram-
mar-translation English instruction in their middle and high school education. Although
the learners had been placed in level 4 classes (the second highest proficiency level)
using the university’s placement test, their English proficiency, especially their oral pro-
ficiency, was still quite low. A background questionnaire revealed little variation in the
language study backgrounds of the learners in this study, and no students reported study-
ing English outside of what was required in their formal schooling.

3  Procedure
Pre-measures of TL ability and the background questionnaire were administered at the
start of the semester. After this initial data collection, instruction based on a communi-
cative textbook proceeded as usual. In addition to regular instruction, three whole-class
discussion activities that lasted approximately 35 minutes each were carried out in order
to collect data about learners' participation. The first discussion took place in the third
week of the semester, the second took place in the fifth week, and the last discussion
took place in the seventh week. All discussions were recorded using audio and video
recorders. Finally, in the last week of the semester, the post-measure of TL ability was
administered.

4  Instruments
a  English proficiency measure:  Since this study was primarily interested in the relation-
ship between participation and oral proficiency, learners’ oral English ability was meas-
ured by an oral narrative task.
This task was administered to learners individually. They were given a short narrative
(see Appendix 1) to read and study for 5 minutes. Then, learners were asked to re-tell
the story without the written text. Since the point of the story was to elicit a speech sam-
ple and not to measure reading comprehension, it was designed to be short and simple
enough for learners placed in level 4 classes to read and understand with ease. This
seemed to be successful since no learners indicated that they had any difficulty under-
standing the story.

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472 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

The oral narrative task was administered again at the end of the semester as a post-test
of oral ability. The same story was used as the basis for the post-test in order to ensure
that the language necessary to complete the task was the same in both the pre- and post-
tests. Although 14 weeks passed between the time of the pre- and post-tests and under-
standing the story itself did not seem to be difficult for any students even in the pre-test,
it must be acknowledged that simply having done the task before might allow students to
perform better on the post-test than the pre-test. The fact that not all learners improved
on the post-test does provide some reassurance in this regard.

b  Participation measures: Whole-class discussion materials and procedures:  Although par-

ticipation in communicative English courses often takes place in pairs and small groups,
the whole-class discussion format was chosen for several reasons.
One reason was practicality. Getting enough video cameras and situating them all in
small classrooms was impractical. Without video, discerning who is speaking is difficult
and further complicated by people speaking at the same time. Another reason for choos-
ing the whole-class discussion task was the nature of the turns the task produces. In small
groups or pairs, participants have a greater obligation to say something; in a whole-class
discussion task, it is easier to refrain from participation. This was important since the
researcher desired to examine learners’ voluntary oral participation. Finally, the open-
ended nature of a discussion task allows and requires learners to formulate their own
utterances. In contrast, more controlled tasks would have yielded a narrower range of
language.
It must be acknowledged that the whole-class discussion task might have discouraged
some students from participating who would have been more inclined to participate in
small groups or pairs, and so it is difficult to be certain that the participation elicited by
this task is representative of learners' overall participation tendencies. However, the
researcher, who was also the regular teacher of this class, was not at all surprised by the
individual learners' behavior during the discussions because it generally matched his
perception of their regular class participation habits.
The whole-class discussion task used in this study was a modified version of the one
described by Robson (1994). First, the class agreed on a number of topics; the topics
upon which the three discussions (one topic per discussion) were based were ‘working
mothers’, ‘international marriage’, and ‘dreams/future plans’. The researcher then cre-
ated or adapted short reading passages about the topics. In the classes preceding discus-
sions, the reading passages were distributed to the learners, who read them in class to
ensure there were no comprehension difficulties. Then, for homework, learners were
asked to re-read the passage, answer some comprehension questions, and formulate three
or more discussion questions related to the reading. Discussion questions were described
as different from comprehension questions in that they are meant to spark discussion
about opinions, experiences, and ideas, not simply gauge understanding of the reading
passage. These learner-generated questions were used as the basis for the whole-class
discussion. The learners brought their discussion questions to the next class meeting, and
spent a few minutes discussing them with a partner as a warm-up for the discussion.
After the warm-up, the researcher announced the start of the discussion and asked
somebody to begin the discussion by asking one of their discussion questions or making

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Delaney 473

a comment about the reading. This was often met with silence. However, the teacher
avoided filling the silence and waited for a student to begin the discussion. If asked a
question, the teacher answered it, but avoided dominating the discussion. If an extended
period of silence occurred, the teacher reminded the class of some of their options for
participating (e.g. asking a follow-up question, stating an opinion, asking a new discus-
sion question, and so on) but never called upon anyone to participate. The learners were
undoubtedly aware that participation was desired, but the researcher did not pressure the
learners or say anything about participation being required. The discussions were pre-
sented as just another class activity. As much as possible, the decision to participate was
left up to the learners. The recordings of these discussions formed the basis of the analy-
sis of learners’ oral participation in class.

5  Analysis of the data

Three sets of variables were used in this study: TL ability measures, TL ability gain
scores, and measures of oral participation. As was mentioned, TL ability was measured
by pre- and post- oral narrative tasks. Mean participation scores (averaged from all the
discussion classes) were used for the analysis.
The reliability of the scoring/coding schemes for both the oral narrative task and oral
participation were checked by enlisting the assistance of a linguistics doctoral student at
the University of Oregon in the USA. This assistant was given training in the coding
scheme and then asked to code five of the oral narrative transcripts and one class discus-
sion transcript. After the assistant had finished his coding, his coding worksheets were
compared with the researcher’s worksheets in order to investigate whether there were
any discrepancies between them. The analysis did reveal a number of small discrepan-
cies, but they were all the result of simple miscounts (e.g. miscounting the number of
syllables) on the part of the researcher or the assistant. After re-counting together the
measures in which discrepancies occurred, the researcher and assistant obtained 100%
agreement on the coding scheme. Thus, the coding schemes seem to have been quite reli-
able and easy to follow.

a  Analysis of language proficiency (oral narrative) data:  Learners’ oral narratives were
recorded and the quality and quantity of the language were analysed. Quantity of oral
production was operationalized as the total number of words produced (not counting
false starts, self-repetition, or fillers). Quality of oral production was analysed in terms
of accuracy, complexity, and fluency.
Accuracy was the ratio of error-free clauses to total number of clauses. In determining
whether clauses contained errors, hesitation phenomena were ignored. Hesitation phe-
nomena comprised repetitions (other than repetitions used for rhetorical effect), false
starts, fillers, reformulations, and replacements (Skehan & Foster, 1999). If the reformu-
lated clause was free of errors, it was counted as correct. Similarly, connectives such as
‘and’ or ‘so’ at the start of an utterance were counted as correct since they often function
as discourse markers. Non-native-likeness was also ignored as long as the clause did not
contain any morphosyntactic violations. Thus, the definition of error-free was essentially
the same as the one used by Foster and Skehan (1996): ‘A clause in which there is no

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474 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

error in syntax, morphology, or word order. Errors in lexis were counted when the word
used was incontrovertibly wrong. In cases of fine decisions of appropriacy, no error was
recorded’ (p. 310).
Complexity was defined as the ratio of clauses per AS unit. AS units were identi-
fied according to the criteria described by Foster et al. (2000). According to Foster
et al., ‘An AS unit is a single speaker’s utterance consisting of an independent clause,
or sub-clausal unit, together with any subordinate clause(s) associated with either’
(p. 365). For example, the utterance ‘he found a wallet’ would be considered one AS
unit consisting of one clause. Thus, a hypothetical learner who only produced one-
clause AS units like this one would receive a complexity score of one (the ratio of one
clause to one AS unit = one). However, utterances such as ‘he couldn’t believe he had
the winning ticket’ would be considered one AS unit consisting of two clauses. A
hypothetical learner who always produced such two-clause AS units would receive a
complexity score of two.
Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) note that in studies of fluency, a distinction is often made
between temporal variables and hesitation phenomena. Ellis and Barkhuizen go on to
point out that there is evidence (see Skehan, 1998) that these ‘constitute distinct dimen-
sions of fluency’ (p. 156). Therefore, the present study operationalized fluency using
variables from both of these two categories.
The temporal variables used in this study were speech rate and mean length of run.
Speech rate was computed by dividing the total number of syllables produced by a
learner (not counting hesitation phenomena) by the time it took to produce them. The
other temporal variable was mean length of run, which was the mean number of syl-
lables produced between pauses lasting for .5 seconds or more. While this might be
considered a rather long pause in order to be counted as the end of a run, the speech
of these low-level Japanese learners seemed to merit a longer pause than one might
otherwise choose. While speech rates were computed for both the oral narratives and
oral participation in class, mean length of run was only used for the oral narrative.
This is because the turns learners took in the course of class participation were often
too short to compute mean length of run (i.e. turns frequently consisted of only one
run). Speech rate was chosen since it is the ‘principal temporal variable’, and mean
length of run was chosen to investigate the ‘extent to which learners are able to pro-
duce segments of a message without pausing’ while engaged in the oral narrative task
(Ellis and Barkhuizen, 2005, p. 156).
To examine the other dimension of fluency, hesitation phenomena, the mean number of
hesitation phenomena per AS unit was computed. Again, hesitation phenomena comprised
pauses, repetitions (other than repetitions used for rhetorical effect), false starts, fillers, refor-
mulations, and replacements (Skehan & Foster, 1999). Because the amount of learners’ pro-
duction varied widely with some learners producing only a few words and others producing
hundreds, it was necessary to compute the number of hesitation phenomena in relation to a
fixed unit, and this is why the number of hesitation phenomena per AS unit was chosen.

As an example of how this measure was computed, consider the following AS unit:

he (check) checked (this lott-) this ticket in the newspaper

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Delaney 475

As can be seen in the transcript, there are two hesitation phenomena in this AS unit.
Thus, if a hypothetical learner always produced two hesitation phenomena per AS unit as
in this example, his or her score on this fluency measure would be two. It is perhaps
worth noting that this is a negative measure of fluency in that the higher the score, the
lower the fluency.

b  Analysis of participation data:  The class discussions were transcribed and analysed.
As with the oral narratives, learners’ participation in the whole-class discussions was
measured in terms of quantity and quality. Quantity of participation was the number of
words spoken (not counting false starts, self-repetition, or fillers).
The quality of oral participation was again measured in terms of accuracy, fluency,
and complexity. The measures of quality were all calculated in the same way that they
were calculated for the oral narratives, except that, as was previously mentioned, mean
length of run was abandoned due to the large number of very short turns.

IV Results
1  Descriptive statistics
As can be seen in Table 1, even though all the learners had been placed in level 4 classes
on the basis of the university's pencil-and-paper placement test, the oral narrative task
revealed quite a bit of variation in learners’ abilities, demonstrating that such oral meas-
ures can provide valuable and detailed information about learners’ TL ability that is not
easily captured by traditional tests of receptive skills.

Table 1.  Descriptive statistics for oral narrative pre-measure of TL ability

n statistic Minimum Maximum Mean SD

statistic statistic statistic statistic
Quantity (number of words) 37 4.00 143.00 55.9459 27.90455
Accuracy 37 0.00 0.60 0.2874 0.20433
Complexity 37 1.00 1.67 1.1553 0.18877
Fluency (speech rate) 37 0.11 0.95 0.5620 0.18624
Fluency (mean length of run) 37 1.67 4.50 2.8210 0.58147
Fluency (hesitation 37 0.20 5.00 1.9725 1.22931
phenomena per AS unit)

Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for the measures of participation in the class
discussions. The table reveals a great deal of variation in both the quality and quantity of
learners' participation in the discussion tasks.
It should be noted that there is a difference in n size between the quantity and quality
measures. This is because learners who were present but said nothing during the discus-
sions received zero scores for the quantity measures. However, they were not given qual-
ity scores (i.e. were left as missing cases) since quality could not be ascertained from a
lack of participation. Therefore, the quantity measure shows more cases (n = 37) than the
quality measures (n = 30).

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476 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

Table 2.  Descriptive statistics for class discussion participation measures

n statistic Minimum Maximum Mean SD

statistic statistic statistic statistic
Quantity (number of words) 37 0.00 109.50 29.0044 22.5357
Accuracy 30 0.36 1.00 0.8080 0.12913
Complexity 30 1.00 1.39 1.1530 0.09786
Fluency (speech rate) 30 1.71 4.17 2.5967 0.55706
Fluency (hesitation 30 0.00 0.79 0.2112 0.20016
phenomena per AS unit)

Table 3 reveals that gain scores on the oral narrative were positive on average. This
includes the negative gain score of hesitation phenomena per AS unit since lower scores
on this measure indicate greater fluency. It is possible that having previously done this
task once 14 weeks earlier at the start of the semester may have contributed somewhat to
the learners’ gains, but it seems likely that at least some of the gains reflect actual pro-
gress in oral proficiency, especially since this group of learners reported not having had
many opportunities to practice speaking English in their previous studies which tended
to be focused on written texts.

Table 3.  Descriptive statistics for oral narrative gain scores

n statistic Minimum Maximum Mean SD

statistic statistic statistic statistic
Quantity (number of words) 37 –15.00 145.00 25.4595 30.7883
Accuracy 37 –0.35 .50 .0191 .19194
Complexity 37 –0.40 .80 .1120 .25555
Fluency (speech rate) 37 –0.21 .35 .0667 .14830
Fluency (mean length of run) 37 –0.85 1.72 .2137 .55765
Fluency (hesitation 37 –3.23 2.54 –0.2334 1.07382
phenomena per AS unit)

2  Correlations
Pearson product-moment correlations were performed to examine the relationships
between participation and proficiency. The level of significance was set at .05.
The research question asked whether there was a relationship between the quantity
and quality of learners’ participation in the discussion lessons and gains made in TL abil-
ity. Table 4 sheds light on this question. The table reveals a number of statistically sig-
nificant correlations between participation in the discussions and gains in the oral
narrative measures. First, there was a significant negative correlation between quantity
of participation and oral narrative fluency gains in terms of mean length of run learners
produced (r = –.377, p = .048). In other words, producing more words in the discussion
lessons was associated with a decrease in fluency on the oral narrative task.

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Delaney 477

Table 4.  Correlation analysis of mean discussion participation and oral narrative gain scores

Quantity Accuracy Complexity Fluency Fluency Hesitation

(number (speech (mean length phenomena
of words) rate) of run) per AS unit
Quantity (number of r –0.152 0.066 –0.104 –0.057 –0.377* 0.180
words)
Accuracy r 0.148 0.182 –0.061 0.428* 0.226 –0.132
Complexity r –0.237 0.125 0.072 0.472* –0.260 –0.336
Fluency (speech rate) r 0.153 0.191 0.030 0.272 0.339 –0.255
Fluency (hesitation r –0.106 0.008 0.489* –0.195 –0.433* –0.049
phenomena per AS unit)
Note: * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Next, there was a significant positive correlation between overall accuracy of partici-
pation and fluency (speech rate) gains (r = .429, p = .029). There was also a significant
positive correlation between complexity of participation and fluency (speech rate) gains
(r = .472, p = .013). Thus, participating with more accuracy and complexity in the dis-
cussions was associated with an increase in fluency on the oral narrative task.
In addition to the correlations between participation and fluency gains, there was also
a significant positive correlation between fluency (total hesitation phenomena per AS
unit) in the discussions and complexity gains on the oral narrative task (r = .489, p =
.013). Hesitation phenomena per AS unit was also significantly negatively correlated
with fluency (mean length of run) gains (r = –.433, p = .031) on the oral narrative.
However, hesitation phenomena per AS unit was a negative measure of fluency in that
the higher the number of hesitation phenomena, the lower the fluency. Thus, participat-
ing with more hesitation in the discussions was associated with (1) complexity gains and
(2) reduced mean length of run (fluency) on the oral narrative task.

V Discussion
Teachers sometime think of students who participate more as better students or perceive
such learners as better at the TL. In the present study, this was not the case. Surely, learn-
ers who participate frequently can be beneficial to a class by creating an atmosphere in
which participation is seen as acceptable or normal. They often act as ‘spark plugs’ that
help get activities rolling. However, while these students’ participation may help their
classmates participate, simply talking a lot was not correlated with increased TL profi-
ciency for the talkative students themselves.
The results summarized in Table 5 show that there were significant relationships
between learners’ oral participation and the gains they made in TL ability. First, the
results suggest that quantity of participation alone was not significantly correlated with
TL development. In the present study, quantity of participation was only significantly
correlated with a decrease in fluency in terms of mean length of run. Although

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478 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

Table 5.  Significant correlations between participation and gains in TL ability

Discussion participation measure TL gain Direction of correlation

Quantity Fluency (mean length of run) Negative
Accuracy Fluency (speech rate) Positive
Complexity Fluency (speech rate) Positive
(Dis)fluency (hesitation Complexity Positive
phenomena per AS unit)
(Dis)fluency (hesitation Fluency (mean length of run) Negative
phenomena per AS unit)

‘correlation does not equal causation’, one might speculate that learners who participated
frequently (perhaps by taking a lot of non-creative, exemplar-based turns such as ‘I
agree’ or ‘Me, too’) grew comfortable speaking without much planning, or just ‘having
a go at it’, and this resulted in shorter runs followed by pauses during which they pre-
pared their production online. This explanation makes sense to the researcher to whom it
seemed that once students found ways to participate with which they were comfortable,
they tended to participate in the same way repeatedly. If that is in fact the case, it is not
necessarily a negative development.
Since the magnitude of the correlation was not very strong (r = –.377) and just barely
passed the level of significance (p = .048), another possibility is that this result is simply
due to random chance. In either case, the fact remains that quantity of participation was
not significantly related to any positive gains in TL ability.
On the other hand, a significant relationship was found between the quality (accuracy
and complexity) of learners’ participation in the discussion lessons and gains in fluency
(speech rate) on the oral narrative post-measure. While it is again important to note that
‘correlation does not equal causation,’ it is possible to hypothesize that producing more
accurate and complex utterances forces learners to engage in more intensive processing,
resulting in greater gains in TL ability and enlarging the range of things learners can say
with a degree of fluency. If this were the case, it might be seen as supporting several
hypotheses put forward in the SLA literature, such as Swain’s (1985) contention that
output that forces greater syntactic processing is important for SLA. The results might
also be seen as supporting Skehan’s (1998) contention that use of the rule-based system
for speech production should result in greater interlanguage development than use of the
exemplar-based system because in this study learners who produced more accurate and
complex language (and likely engaged the rule-based system) exhibited greater gains in
TL ability.
It is also interesting that disfluently participating in the discussion using copious hesi-
tation phenomena was associated with complexity gains but fluency loss on the oral
narrative. Again indulging in speculation about why this might be the case, perhaps
learners who used many hesitation phenomena did so because they were engaging in the
processing necessary to produce more complex utterances. Indeed, learners rarely hesi-
tated when producing seemingly non-creative/exemplar-based utterances like ‘I agree’ or

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Delaney 479

‘Me, too’. The ease of producing such utterances is perhaps why they were attractive to
many learners. Thus, another relationship is hinted at here between a type of (dis)fluency
and complexity gains over time. However, if we are allowed a bit more speculation, it is
possible that valuing complexity in this way led to the development of a speech style
that, by definition, meant that the participant’s mean length of run fluency score was
lower (runs were frequently interrupted by hesitation phenomena). Taken at face value,
this result supports the notion that there is a tradeoff between fluency and complexity.
However, whereas previously speech rate was the measure of fluency, here the measure
of fluency, hesitation phenomena, may be different. Perhaps the correlation between lack
of fluency in the discussions and complexity gains on the oral narrative suggests that
using many hesitation phenomena when speaking is indicative of trying to produce com-
plex speech. In this sense, perhaps it is more accurate to remember that speech rate and
hesitation phenomena per AS unit measure rather different aspects of fluency which,
over time, can be influenced differently by the practice of producing accurate, complex,
and fluent speech.
Although the exact nature of the relationships between these variables must remain
speculative in this type of correlational study, taken as a whole, these findings suggest
that it is worth reconsidering the idea that ‘Simply getting learners to speak is the most
important thing’ or ‘The more you speak, the faster you learn.’ Teachers in EFL environ-
ments (such as the Japanese university context in which the present study was conducted)
may be especially prone to this attitude. Because it can sometimes be challenging to get
learners to participate in class, teachers may be happy when their students say anything
in the TL. For anyone with experience teaching in such a context, it is easy to sympathize
with this attitude.
Of course, getting learners to participate at all is a necessary first step. However, the
data collected in this study make it clear that it is possible to participate frequently by
repeating seemingly unprocessed chunks such as ‘Me, too’, or ‘I agree’ and yet engage
in very little language processing. While this adds significantly to one’s word count, the
results in Table 5 remind us that it was unrelated to gains in TL proficiency.
Therefore, placing great importance on getting learners to speak must be tempered
with the knowledge that ‘just speaking’ is not necessarily a catalyst for TL acquisition.
Paradoxically, perhaps a certain degree of oral proficiency is necessary before oral par-
ticipation can be truly efficient and effective for TL acquisition. Perhaps at lower profi-
ciency levels, focusing on input (Krashen, 1981; Ellis, 1992), processing instruction
(Van Patten, 2002), and/or relatively controlled speaking tasks (Kumaravadivelu, 1993)
would serve learners better than ‘free speaking’ types of tasks.
Teachers will, of course, want to create an environment in which learners feel safe and
confident that their oral contributions will be valued. However, once such an environ-
ment has been established, teachers might wish to consider prodding learners to increase
the quality of their production since the results of this study at least raise some doubt that
quantity of participation alone encourages real increases in TL ability. Learners who
contribute a lot of low quality participation may especially need encouragement to
improve the quality of their production.
Learners could be pushed to improve the quality of their participation in a number of
ways. For instance, slowly introducing episodes in which the teacher focuses on form

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480 Language Teaching Research 16(4)

through recasting erroneous utterances would be one way to encourage learners to focus
on the accuracy of their production. Learners could also be encouraged to spend some
time planning their participation before shouting out. Watching the videos of the discus-
sion lessons from the present study, it is apparent that some learners spent significant
amounts of time preparing before taking turns. Very often these learners produced rela-
tively accurate and complex utterances, and producing accurate and/or complex utter-
ances was correlated with proficiency gains.
Yet teachers have to be cautious and use their judgment about how far they can push
learners without causing them to become reticent. Particularly when dealing with anx-
ious students who are less likely to participate in the first place, caution is warranted.

VI Conclusions
In conclusion, it is hoped that the present study will contribute to a greater understanding
of the role of oral participation in SLA. As was discussed in the literature review, previ-
ous studies of participation and language learning produced mixed results, with some
studies finding positive results for quantity of participation while others did not. The
questionable measures of participation, varied measures of language ability, and
the mixed results of these studies make it hard to draw any firm conclusions about the
role of participation.
The present study, by using a direct measure of TL oral ability and clearly and appro-
priately operationalizing participation, examined a bit more carefully the relationship
between oral participation and the development of TL ability. However, more research in
this area is needed. Larger experimental studies would help to shed more light on this
topic, which is of interest to both practitioners and researchers. In the meantime, it is
appropriate to at least entertain a measure of doubt when confronted with the notion that
‘speaking a lot’ is, in and of itself, effective for improving TL proficiency.

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Appendix 1 Oral Narrative Task Materials

Directions:   You have 5 minutes to read the story and remember as much as possible. You may
take notes if you want. After 5 minutes, I will take the paper and your notes from you. Then, you
will try to tell the story to me in as much detail as possible.

ストーリーを読む時間は５分間です。５分経過した後に、思い出せるだけ細かくストー
リーを繰り返してください。（この時にストーリーを見ることはできません）ストーリ
ーを読む際にメモをとってもかまいません。ストーリーを繰り返す時には、このメモを
見ることはできません。

Every morning Mr. Smith gets up at 6:30 am, walks to the convenience store near his house and
buys a newspaper. He has toast and tea for breakfast and reads the newspaper. Then, sometimes, he
goes to work in his shoe shop. But often he stays at home and sits in the sun. On these days Mrs.
Smith complains. But he always smiles and says, ‘I want to take life easy. I want to enjoy myself’.

Yesterday Mr. Smith’s life changed forever. This is what happened.

Mr. Smith found a wallet. It contained 55 dollars, some credit cards and two lottery tickets. Mr.
Smith checked the lottery tickets’ numbers in the newspaper. He couldn’t believe it. He had the
winning ticket! It was worth 6 million dollars.

Mr. Smith didn’t know what to do. After all it wasn’t really his ticket. ‘Do I keep the money for
myself? Or ‘Do I give the ticket back to the wallet’s owner? He asked Mrs. Smith.

After a while he knew what to do. He took the bus to the address of the wallet’s owner. He knocked
on the door. An old woman opened the door.

‘Is Mr. Martin home?’ asked Mr. Smith.

‘Just a minute. He is my daughter’s husband’, said the old woman.

Mr. Martin came to the door. Mr. Smith showed him the ticket and the newspaper.

‘This is your ticket,’ said Mr. Smith, ‘I want you to have it back’.

Mr. Martin couldn’t believe that he had won $6 million dollars.

‘I want to thank you for being so honest’, he said. ‘I want to give you a reward. Do you think that
a million dollars is enough?’

Mr. Smith accepted the million dollars. His life changed. He no longer needed to work. In fact he
and Mrs. Smith lived happily ever after.

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