TY - JOUR

T1 - How does creativity affect second language speech production?

T2 - The moderating role of speaking task type

AU - Suzuki, Shungo

AU - Yasuda, Toshinori

AU - Hanzawa, Keiko

AU - Kormos, Judit

PY - 2022/12/31

Y1 - 2022/12/31

N2 - Our study investigated the role of creativity in second language (L2) speech production using a picture narrative and an open-ended argumentative task administered to 60 Japanese-speaking learners of English. Following recent findings in the field of psychology, the participants’ creativity was assessed in terms of cognitive dimensions (divergent thinking fluency, convergent thinking) and a personality dimension (openness to experience). Participants’ speaking performance was analyzed using a set of complexity, accuracy, fluency and discourse measures. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that both divergent thinking fluency and convergent thinking played a role in the cohesion of speech (indexed by the frequency of connectives) in both speaking tasks, while only in the argumentative task did divergent thinking fluency contribute to an increase in the amount of information (indexed by the total number of words produced). Meanwhile, openness to experience was found to enhance syntactic and lexical complexity only in the picture narrative task. These findings suggest that speakers’ creativity is linked to syntactic and lexical sophistication and discourse aspects of L2 oral performance, all of which are related to conceptualization processes in L2 speech production.

AB - Our study investigated the role of creativity in second language (L2) speech production using a picture narrative and an open-ended argumentative task administered to 60 Japanese-speaking learners of English. Following recent findings in the field of psychology, the participants’ creativity was assessed in terms of cognitive dimensions (divergent thinking fluency, convergent thinking) and a personality dimension (openness to experience). Participants’ speaking performance was analyzed using a set of complexity, accuracy, fluency and discourse measures. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that both divergent thinking fluency and convergent thinking played a role in the cohesion of speech (indexed by the frequency of connectives) in both speaking tasks, while only in the argumentative task did divergent thinking fluency contribute to an increase in the amount of information (indexed by the total number of words produced). Meanwhile, openness to experience was found to enhance syntactic and lexical complexity only in the picture narrative task. These findings suggest that speakers’ creativity is linked to syntactic and lexical sophistication and discourse aspects of L2 oral performance, all of which are related to conceptualization processes in L2 speech production.

KW - CAF

KW - cognitive skills

KW - creativity

KW - personality

KW - speaking

KW - task type

U2 - 10.1002/tesq.3104

DO - 10.1002/tesq.3104

M3 - Journal article

VL - 56

SP - 1320

EP - 1344

JO - TESOL Quarterly

JF - TESOL Quarterly

SN - 0039-8322

IS - 4

ER -