This study examines what features of participants’ behaviors during a group discussion among L1 and L2 speakers of Japanese contribute to the success of autonomous discussions. The video-recorded data were collected from the fish-bowl style discussion training, which targets fourth-year students of Japanese language (L2 students) and exchange students from Japan (L1 students) at one university in Taiwan. Focusing on one group’s discussion that receives relatively high evaluation from the observers, the study scrutinizes the features of their interactions during the discussion. The analysis shows that an L1 student tends to manage the discussion from a broad perspective by timekeeping and by determining the overall procedure of the discussion. However, instead of regulating the discussion procedure by one’s own judgment, the L1 student inclines to involve the L2 students in decision-making process. Moreover, the advanced-level L2 student voluntarily takes charge of the local management of the interaction such as asking questions to solicit others’ opinions and providing discussion agendas. This study concludes that these students’ behaviors reflect their consciousness of the potential power imbalance between L1 and L2 speakers, which is the key for success of conducting autonomous cross-cultural group discussions.
