This article will present the findings of an interventionist study designed to examine the effects of oral communication strategy teaching (OCST) on learners’ performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary ESL classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received 16 hours of OCST and the other served as a comparison group. In weeks 1, 10 and 20, data were collected from the learners’ performance in group work discussions, self-report questionnaires, observations of learners’ strategy use, and stimulated recall interviews. The findings indicate that the treatment class generally outperformed the comparison class. In addition, there was corroborating evidence from the multi-method approach to support the view that young L2 learners tend to rely on ‘bedrock strategies’ in oral communication tasks. The findings will be discussed with respect to explicit and implicit learning and to a match between the cognitive/linguistic demands of strategy use and the learners’ proficiency level. Finally, the distinct advantages of using a multi-method approach to gauging the effects of OCST are appraised.
[Copyright © 2006 Centre for Language Studies of the National University of Singapore.]

Research into the teaching and learning of speaking in the ESL context is relatively neglected. There have been only a few studies that addressed the need to incorporate the development of strategic competence into the L2 oral classroom (e.g., Cohen, 1998; Dornyei, 1995; Konishi & Tarone, 2004). This paper will report findings from a strategy interventionist study conducted in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong. Based on a psycholinguistic model of speech processing, eight strategies were identified and introduced to the treatment class in the study. A data collection method comprising stimulated recall interviews and observations that aimed to investigate respectively the learning process (i.e., covert thoughts) and the learning product (i.e., overt speech) was employed. A comparison of the findings between the treatment class and the control class which was not exposed to any strategies-based instruction supports the view that not all strategies are equal and that some are more teachable than the others. Specifically, 'Resourcing' seems to function as a 'bedrock strategy' for young L2 speakers. Possible implications for strategy instruction are made with a view to enhancing the development of strategic competence in the L2 classroom.
[Copyright © 2005 The Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.]