Enhancing L2 Learners’ Self-Regulated Speaking Through Digital Oral Dialogue Journaling: An EFL Classroom-based Study

Two decades of L2 self-regulated learning (SRL) research has focused heavily on reading and writing, leaving speaking an under-explored area. While speaking is an important yet difficult communicative skill to master that often generates high anxiety for English learners, EFL contexts seldom provide enough practice opportunities beyond the classroom. The study introduces an innovative pedagogy – digital oral dialogue journaling (DODJ) – and investigates its effectiveness in cultivating SRL speaking strategy use in a Hong Kong secondary school. A total of 95 recorded journal videos were created by a class of 19 students and uploaded to the digital platform Flipgrid over five weeks to receive dialogic feedback from the teacher on a weekly basis. Students’ speaking strategy use was conceptualized from a social cognitive SRL framework, and changes were measured using a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire as well as through two semi-structured interviews. Results of repeated measures MANOVA and ANOVA tests reveal significant increases in multiple cognitive and metacognitive strategies such as rehearsing, memorizing, and evaluating. Interview findings further show that certain DODJ design features facilitated the changes, including flexible topic selection and scheduling, unlimited video submission and review, and emoticon masking and dialogic teacher feedback. Pedagogical suggestions are offered on how to design effective DODJ practice to cultivate L2 learners to become strategic, self-regulated speakers.