Students’ development of multilingual competence has attracted increasing attention from language researchers and educators. However, research on students’ interaction strategy use in group discussions across different language settings remains scarce. In this study, therefore, we examined interaction strategy use in Cantonese as a first language (L1) and Putonghua as a second language (L2) during group discussion tasks among 42 primary school students in Hong Kong. We also investigated the effects of interaction strategy use on performance in respective tasks. We discovered that students employed significantly more interaction strategies in L1 than in L2, with a higher contribution to L1 task performance. Specifically, three of the five strategies identified—Strategy 2 (S2) asking for opinions, S3 expressing attitude, and S5 non-verbal language—were employed more frequently in L1 than in L2. Furthermore, we found that strategy use had various effects on oral performance between the two languages. In the L1 task, S1 expressing actively, S3 expressing attitude, and S4 giving clarification significantly predicted students’ group discussion performance, whereas this effect was only observed in S1 expressing actively in the L2 task. Pedagogical implications for primary students’ learning of interaction strategies for group discussions in both L1 and L2 are discussed. Copyright © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Integrated group discussion (IGD) tasks represent a new type of integrated speaking task that requires students to communicate with their peers after comprehending and using provided source materials. With its potential to enhance effective communication and information literacy, IGD stands at the core of language education. Although the IGD task type has become increasingly popular, its construct is still unexplored. In this study, 124 Hong Kong undergraduate students completed an IGD task and a group discussion (GD) task (i.e., without source materials) in Putonghua. Four factors, speech and expression, content with source use, interaction, and language usage, were extracted to represent IGD performance. Two indicators of GD performance (linguistic expression and engagement in interaction) significantly predicted IGD performance, explaining 21.9 % of its total variance. The large proportion of unexplained IGD performance variance suggests that IGD tasks may be worth implementing. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed in details. Copyright © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

Self-assessment is believed to complement peer assessment in the classroom. However, whether, how and why this is done remains unclear. This study, by investigating the combined use of self and peer assessment for an academic writing task among a group of undergraduate students in Hong Kong, aims to shed light on how self-assessment complements peer assessment. Self-assessment is found to complement peer assessment in five ways: (1) it guides students to revise when peer assessment is lacking; (2) self-assessment effectively supplements peer assessment when the students had access to peer assessment; (3) even if a student has access to quality peer assessment, self-assessment complements peer assessment due to the different reflection involved in the two processes; (4) self-assessment can supplement peer assessment in terms of issues related to social-affective burdens for the latter; (5) self-assessment also complements peer assessment in that it benefits high and low-achieving students. Two problems surfaced. One is the students' antipathy against self-assessment despite their overall positive perception about peer assessment; the other is the inadequacy of combining self with peer assessment in fostering learning outcomes regardless that the combined use of self and peer assessment helped the students with revision considerably. Copyright © 2023 Routledge.

Integrated writing is increasingly used in language assessment programmes. As a hybrid task, it requires students to coordinate different language skills, i.e. listening, reading and writing, to retrieve information from multiple sources, and compose an essay for a specific purpose. Tapping into the varied skills that contribute to successful integrated writing is especially beneficial for low proficiency students. However, the mechanisms underlying the impact of these skills on integrated writing performance have yet to be thoroughly studied. This study sampled 103 first-year undergraduate students in Hong Kong who showed relatively low proficiency in Chinese language. They completed three independent tasks measuring their listening, reading, and writing skills; an integrated listening-reading-writing task; and an integrated writing strategy use questionnaire. The results indicated that together, the independent skills accounted for 29.5% of the variance in integrated writing performance, suggesting that integrated writing is a skill that goes far beyond the simple combination of listening, reading, and writing. Independent writing showed the strongest correlation with integrated writing, while both independent listening and independent writing exerted direct and indirect effects on integrated writing performance. However, the effect of reading on integrated writing performance was insignificant, even though the two were significantly correlated. These results offer insights into the complex relationships between the skills. The findings enrich our understanding of the construct of integrated writing, as well as suggest strategies for teaching less proficient learners. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Integrated writing skills that emphasize integrated use of language skills and multiple source materials have attracted increasing attention in language education globally and locally in Hong Kong. This study examines teachers’ conceptions of integrated writing skills and interviewed twenty-five Chinese language teachers. Three conceptions emerged from the data, representing writing as a composite of disconnected parts (Category1), a logical inquiry (Category 2), and a developmental process (Category 3). As the categories move up, the alignment between teachers’ conceptions and the curriculum objectives increases accordingly, with the purpose of writing instruction ranging from fulfilling examination requirements, enhancing reasoning skills, to developing integrated use of language skills. The findings also reveal that although the development of integrated writing skills has been a critical component of the Chinese language curriculum since the first public examination in 2007, teachers’ receptivity toward it still varied greatly. Insufficient professional training, the legitimacy of integrated writing as a curriculum component, and the fossilization of the public examination were the factors that accounted for the differing attitudes among the teachers. The discourse of integrated writing in the Hong Kong context has been centered around high-stakes testing. The unbalanced discourse resulted in an oversimplified view that conflated the teaching and learning of integrated writing with integrated writing assessment. The study contributes to the conversation between integrated writing curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.