ABSTRACT. We consider the seond order differential system (1) Y" + Q(i)Y = 0, where Q, Y are nxn matrices with Q = Q(t) a continuous symmetric matrixvalued function, t € [a,+00).We obtain a number of sufficient conditions in order that all prepared solutions Y(t) of (1) are oscillatory. Two approaches are considered, one based on Riccati techniques and the other on variational techniques, and involve assumptions on the behavior of the eigenvalues of Q{t) (or of its integral). These results extend some well-known averaging techniques for scalar equations to system (1).