Effects of Social Skills Training on Oracy and Foreign Language Anxiety of Language-Minority Children

• In Event: 81.032 - MTCC Roundtable Session 37
  In Roundtable Session: 81.032-9 - Supporting Multilingual Learners Across Diverse Teaching Contexts

Abstract

Existing literature remains unclear about the relationship between social competence, second language (L2) speaking proficiency, and foreign language anxiety (FLA) in young learners. To address this gap, we developed a social skills training (SST) program for language minority students (N=30) in elementary schools and measured its effectiveness by pre-, post-, and follow-up test comparisons of social competence, L2 speaking proficiency and FLA with comparison group (N=22). The experimental group showed significantly higher social competence after the training than the comparison group. An improvement in L2 speaking proficiency was observed in experimental group only. FLA was negatively related to speaking proficiency. SST was supported as a promising intervention to improve social competence and speaking proficiency among language minority students.

Authors

• Wai Ming Cheung, The University of Hong Kong

• Michelle N.K. Kong, University of Hong Kong