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Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in L2 fluency analysis: A study of Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking learners of English at two school levels
Abstract
Contemporary L2 fluency studies are predominantly quantitative examinations that focus on broad, group level differences in fluency. In this study, 20 Finnish-speaking and 20 Swedish-speaking learners from two school levels (upper secondary school and university) were studied for their fluency in L2 English. A control group consisted of ten native speakers of English. The quantitative analysis was complemented with a qualitative examination of six subjects’ productions to explore also individual differences in fluency. The results suggest that a quantitative examination is suitable for speed and silent pause measures, which differentiated the groups clearly. However, differences in the use of filled pauses and repair phenomena could only be revealed with a qualitative analysis. A quantitative analysis should therefore be complemented with a qualitative examination to form a comprehensive picture of L2 fluency, including individual resources for achieving fluent speech.
... Yet, according to Ringbom (2007), the advantages for the Swedish-speaking Finns are likely to be greater at the beginning of their L2 studies, diminishing with increasing proficiency and potentially disappearing by university level. Peltonen and Lintunen (2016), who compared Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking learners' L2 English speech fluency at two proficiency levels, found that Swedish-speaking upper secondary school students indeed outperformed their Finnish-speaking peers in L2 English fluency, while the differences were minor at university level, supporting Ringbom's (2007) hypothesis. However, the study did not include L1 speech samples from the participants and the inferences about L1 influence were thus indirect, while the present study allows for more direct comparisons between L1 and L2 productions across two participant groups. ...
... The pauses are also more clearly concentrated at clause boundaries, while learner speech typically contains more mid-clause pauses (e.g., Kahng, 2014;Raupach, 1980). Gradually, with increasing proficiency, learners' fluency approaches native speaker fluency, although temporal measures, especially speed fluency, may show clearer development than other aspects (Kormos & Dénes, 2004;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016;. While comparisons between learner and native speech fluency provide important information about how close learners are to the target norm in their L2 fluency, more recently, some studies have adopted alternative designs that enable within-subject comparisons (De Jong et al., 2015;Derwing et al., 2009;Duran-Karaoz & Tavakoli, 2020;Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017;Peltonen, 2018). ...
... In addition, based on previous research, cross-linguistic differences were expected to result in some, albeit relatively minor, differences in L2 English across the two groups (cf. Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016;Ringbom, 2007). For RQ 2, based on previous studies examining L1 and L2 correlations (De Jong et al., 2015;Derwing et al., 2009;Duran-Karaoz & Tavakoli, 2020;Huensch & Tracy-Ventura, 2017;Peltonen, 2018), both typological differences and proficiency level were expected to influence the strength of the associations along with potential individual differences. ...
... Repetitions can also act as a connecting bridge between utterances (retrospective repetition, Hieke, 1981) or as a stalling bridge (prospective repetition), allowing the speaker time for lexical retrieval. As word and phrase repetitions constituted a fluency maintenance factor, one may think that these repetitions were used in a retrospective manner, as well as in order to convey the intended message for rhetorical purposes, as Peltonen and Lintunen (2016) have suggested. ...
... In Figure 1, we have created a theoretical map of cognitive fluency tools in typical speech. (Allwood et al., 1990;Arnold et al., 2003;Hieke, 1981;Levelt, 1983;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016;Postma, 2000;Segalowitz, 2010) In Figure 1, interruptions in speech are seen as an intentional tool for signaling change (Allwood et al., 1990). The speaker's purpose for interrupting the message is to formulate the expression. ...
... Word and phrase repetitions, then, reflect a choice (Allwood et al., 1990). The speaker may repeat to restart a phrase, connect things, get some extra time, for example for planning the next utterance, or improving the message in a rhetoric or in stylistic way (Hieke, 1981;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). The function for repetitions is to maintain fluency. ...
Narrative speech samples from 70 Finnish adults without speech disorders were analysed for disfluency types and their frequencies, as well as for relationships between various disfluencies. A factor analysis, revealed four factors: 1) disfluencies related to language formulation (interruptions and revisions), 2) planning the message (hesitations and interjections), 3) maintaining fluency (word and phrase repetitions) and 4) articulation (sound and syllable repetitions, prolongations). Of these factors, disfluencies related to language formulation and fluency maintenance significantly contributed to disfluency frequency. The results support the view that typical disfluencies can be seen as fluency-shaping tools that support communicative purposes.
... Repetitions and self-corrections, further, did not differentiate between the at-home and abroad groups. For repetitions, Peltonen and Lintunen (2016) found that these were more connected with personal speaking styles and strategies than inadequate language skills in their L2 speech data. Repetitions showed very much within-group variation and their use did not mostly differentiate between proficiency groups (see also Bosker et al., 2013). ...
... Repetitions showed very much within-group variation and their use did not mostly differentiate between proficiency groups (see also Bosker et al., 2013). This implies that speakers may use repetitions in a functional manner, to avoid excessively long silences, to keep the speech-turn, and to minimise disruptions in the speech (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). The use of repetitions, furthermore, did not differentiate the ADHD and normal control groups in a sentence production task (Engelhardt et al., 2010). ...
... Repeating items is included in the repair phenomena of speech (Skehan, 2003), and therefore, it was considered here to be a part of conscious monitoring of speech. Repetitions are proposed, furthermore, to be possible strategic devices and an intentional way of buying time during speech (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). In the current study, this category only included repeating whole items, whereas partial repetitions were included in pronunciation problems (cf., De Jong e t al., 2015). ...
Oral fluency is widely included in second language assessments, but its relationship to language proficiency is not straightforward. In the current study, data gathered in an experimental setting were examined with an exploratory fluency analysis. The aim was to examine the relationship between fluency of lexical access and proficiency in foreign language (L2). Fluency of the lexical access was studied by analysing inaccuracies in one word recognition and one word retrieval task. To see if proficiency had an effect on the number and the type of inaccuracies, lexical access tasks were carried out for 563 Finnish school children from grades 4, 8, and 11 in their L2 (English). Proficiency in L2 was expected to develop during school education. The inaccuracies were proposed to stem from processing limitations in language use, i.e., inefficiency of lexical access, or from control of attention. The hypothesis was that if lexical access is not automatized, there are less resources for attention-control in recognising and retrieving words. Therefore, the inaccuracies in L2 relating to inefficiency were hypothesised to decrease with proficiency, whereas the ones relating to control of attention were proposed to be more stable or to increase. Furthermore, the fluency of L1 lexical access was used as a control measure. The results offered some confirmation to these hypotheses. For example, some evidence for more available resources in correcting and monitoring speech was found for the older students. The overall results highlight caution in assessing L2 fluency, as not all types of inaccuracies were connected with lower proficiency.
... Based on a mixed-methods approach (see, e.g., Degand et al., 2019;Peltonen, 2020;Peltonen & Lintunen 2016), the present study addressed two research questions (RQs): ...
... The present study focuses on fluency in the narrow sense (utterance fluency) based on Skehan's (2009) three-fold framework and complements the analysis with measures of so-called fluency resources or stalling mechanisms (such as FPs, repetitions, or filler words; e.g., Dörnyei & Kormos, 1998) to examine whether the participants utilize individual mechanisms to avoid long silences during planning for maintaining fluent speech. These features have been identified as being particularly prone to individual variation in previous L2 speech fluency research (e.g., Cucchiarini et al., 2002;Dumont, 2018;Götz, 2013;Peltonen, 2021; and have been shown to cooccur (e.g., Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). In addition, some composite measures combining Skehan's (2009) speed and breakdown dimensions were used to obtain a more general impression of fluency development and to complement the measures related to individual dimensions of fluency. ...
Second language (L2) speech fluency has been found to develop especially in study-abroad contexts, while few studies have examined fluency development in formal instruction. Furthermore, the instructional approaches have rarely targeted fluency specifically. The present study examines the effects of a teaching experiment utilizing learner-corpus-based awareness-raising activities on L2 fluency development in formal instruction. Eighteen Finnish university students of English, divided into control and experimental groups, provided speech samples at the beginning and end of an L2 English pronunciation course. The samples were analyzed with a mixed-methods approach. Quantitative analyses demonstrated mostly minor differences in fluency development across the groups. Qualitative analyses demonstrated individual learning trajectories regarding stalling mechanisms. The findings suggest that while corpus-based awareness-raising activities can be beneficial for supporting L2 fluency development, a more extensive teaching approach is needed for full effects. The study has implications for L2 fluency research and pedagogy.
... The research approach followed in this investigation is extreme case sampling (Dörnyei, 2010, p. 128), which involves the selection of the most extreme cases in a sample with the purpose of performing an in-depth analysis. Similar methodology has been followed in a number of studies on L2 speech fluency (e.g., Ejzenberg, 2000;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016); however, to the best of our knowledge, none of them placed LA as an affective component of an L2 speaker in the limelight. Generally, this study responds to the recent call for enquiries contributing to the understanding of complex relationship between affective dimensions of an L2 learner and their L2 speech (cf. ...
... The speech samples were transcribed and coded by an informed research assistant and later checked by another research assistant. The transcription conventions applied after Peltonen and Lintunen (2016) were as follows: (.)micro pauses .25 and shorter, :elongations or drawls of sounds (e.g., a:nd), *pt*lip smack, *hah*laughter, (0.43)timed pause, *h*audible breaths, {*h*_0.83}timed audible nonlexicalized filled pauses, including audible breaths.. Silent pauses longer than .25 were annotated in PRAAT (Boersma & Weenink, 2007) with the support of PRAAT script (De Jong et al., 2021), and temporal measures calculated with Lennes's (2002) script. ...
The study examines selected temporal markers of L2 utterance fluency in the speech of advanced L2 learners who exhibit high (HLA) and low (LLA) language anxiety levels. Out of the pool of 59 participants, six HLA and six LLA individuals were selected for an in-depth analysis on the basis of their scores on the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (the FLCAS) (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). Speech samples from a monologue task were examined for selected L2 utterance fluency measures: filled (FP) and silent pause (SP) frequency, mean length of silent pause (MLSP), articulation rate (AR), speech rate (SR), and mean length of run (MLR). The results provided insights into the L2 speech fluency profiles of anxious and non-anxious individuals. The analysis disclosed relatively higher frequency and disparate application of FPs, slower speed of speech, and more varied profiles in MLR in the HLA group as compared to the LLA group. The findings yield pedagogical and methodological implications.
... There are theoretically relevant linguistic features to temporal aspects of speech: the rhythmic pattern (e.g., stress-timed vs. syllable-timed language) and the syllable structure or complexity (Pellegrino et al., 2011). Closely looking at the literature of the L1-L2 UF link, one can argue that while the most researched L2 is English, researched L1s were mainly either stress-timed languages, such as Slavic (Derwing et al., 2009), Swedish (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016), or syllable-based languages, such as Finnish (Peltonen, 2018), Mandarin (Derwing et al., 2009 context of learners of L2 English with mora-timed L1 language backgrounds. One of the representative mora-timed languages is Japanese (Vance, 2008). ...
... They also found that the frequency of repairs did not differ across levels of proficiency. Repair phenomena tend to be associated with speakers' L1 speaking style (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016), and consequently they might serve as less reliable cues for listeners than speed, breakdown, and composite measures. ...
In the context of the learning, teaching, and assessment of second language (L2) speaking skills, L2 fluency has been regarded as one of the important constructs. However, L2 fluency research has witnessed a long debate over the definition and measurements of L2 oral fluency; scholars have interchangeably used the term, “fluency”, with different connotations, such as speakers’ ability, speech features, and listeners’ perception. In order to distinguish different conceptualizations of fluency, Segalowitz (2010) proposed three subconstructs of fluency: utterance fluency (i.e., observable temporal features of speech), cognitive fluency (i.e., speaker’s ability to manipulate L2 knowledge efficiently), and perceived fluency (i.e., listener’s subjective judgements of fluency). However, it is still unclear how these three subconstructs of L2 fluency are interrelated with each other.
The overarching goal of the thesis is to examine the construct of L2 oral fluency, particularly focusing on the interrelationship between cognitive, utterance, and perceived fluency. To this end, this thesis consists of four separate studies. Study 1 took a meta-analytic approach to synthesizing previous findings on the relationship between perceived and utterance fluency. Study 2 compared utterance fluency performance across speaking tasks which were designed to differ in the quality of speech processing demands, operationalized by task design features (i.e., task effects). Study 3 examined the contribution of cognitive fluency to utterance fluency, taking a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The study also analysed the stability of the factor structure of utterance fluency (Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005)—speed, breakdown, and repair fluency—and cognitive fluency across speaking tasks. Finally, Study 4 investigated the extent to which L2 utterance fluency can be predicted from L1 utterance fluency with regard to the moderator effects of L2 proficiency on the L1-L2 utterance fluency link.
Study 1 collected 263 effect sizes from 22 studies reporting the correlation coefficients between listener-based judgements of fluency and objective measures of temporal features (N = 335–746). Among the pooled utterance fluency measures, Study 1 selected the common measures from four different categories: speed (articulation rate), breakdown (silent pause frequency, silent pause duration), repair (disfluency rate), and composite fluency (mean length of run, speech rate). Methodological moderator variables were selected with respect to the major phases of research into the utterance-perceived fluency link: Speech stimulus preparation (e.g., task type, target L2), Rater background (e.g., L1 vs. L2 listeners), Perceived fluency rating procedure (Definition of fluency, the number of point scales), and Utterance fluency measure calculation (length of pauses, manual vs. automated annotation).
Studies 2–4 were conducted using the same dataset which included a set of cognitive and utterance fluency measures from Japanese-speaking learners of English (N = 128). Using a range of psycholinguistic tests, cognitive fluency was assessed in terms of linguistic resources and processing speed at different linguistic levels: vocabulary (vocabulary size, lexical retrieval speed), grammar (sentence construction speed and accuracy, grammaticality judgement speed and accuracy), and pronunciation (articulatory speed). In order to measure utterance fluency, speech data were elicited via four speaking tasks which differed in the quality of speech processing demands: argumentative task, picture narrative task, and text retelling tasks with/without read-aloud assistance. The speech data were analysed in terms of three subconstructs of utterance fluency (speed, breakdown, and repair fluency). The participants’ L1 fluency was also assessed, using another L1 argumentative speech task. Their proficiency scores were operationalized as two factor scores of cognitive fluency (linguistic resources and processing speed) in Study 3.
Study 1 demonstrated that perceived fluency was strongly associated with speed and pause frequency (r = |.59–.62|), moderately with pause duration (r = |.46|), and weakly with repair fluency (r = |.20|), while composite measures showed the strongest effect sizes (r = |.72–.76|). A series of moderator analyses also revealed that the utterance-perceived fluency link may be influenced by methodological variables particularly related to speech stimulus preparation (target L2, task type, length of stimuli) and perceived fluency rating procedure (the definition of fluency presented to raters).
Study 2 compared utterance fluency across four speaking tasks, using Generalized Linear Mixed-effect modelling (GLMM) with the tasks as a categorical fixed-effects predictor. The results showed that conceptualizing demands (content generation) increased the frequency of filled pauses, while the demands on formulation (activation of linguistic and phonological representations) had an impact on articulation rate, mid-clause pause ratio, and mid-clause pause duration.
In Study 3, prior to an SEM analysis, a set of confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) demonstrated that utterance fluency has a three-factor structure (speed, breakdown, and repair fluency) and that cognitive fluency has a two-factor structure (linguistic resource and processing speed). An SEM analysis, based on these factor structures of cognitive and utterance fluency, showed that speed fluency was primarily associated with processing speed, while both linguistic resource and processing speed equally contributed to breakdown fluency. Repair fluency was significantly linked to linguistic resource, only when the content of speech was predefined (picture narrative and text summary tasks). Meanwhile, repair fluency was found to be independent of processing speed in all the speaking tasks.
Study 4 examined the L1-L2 utterance fluency link using a set of GLMMs. The results suggested that all the L2 utterance fluency measures were predicted from their L1 counterparts. In addition, significant moderator effects of L2 proficiency on the L1-L2 fluency link were found only in speed fluency measures. The L1-L2 fluency link was weakened as a function of L2 linguistic resource but was strengthened as a function of L2 processing speed.
The results of Study 1–4 confirmed that the relative importance of three subdimensions of utterance fluency—speed, breakdown, and repair fluency—can vary, depending on the perspective of assessment (perceived vs. cognitive fluency). These findings provide several practical implications for language assessment, such as the development of assessment tools and guidance for examiner training, as well as for L2 fluency learning and teaching.
... Repair fluency is in a supplementary relationship with breakdown fluency (Williams & Korko, 2019), as repairs can reflect the operation of selfmonitoring processes (Kormos, 2006) and offer an opportunity for speakers to buy time to deal with disruptions in speech production processes (Bui, Ahmadian, & Hunter, 2019). Repair fluency has been found to be consistent across first language (L1) and L2 production (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016) and across L2 proficiency levels , suggesting that it is more strongly associated with individual speaking style than L2 competence. ...
... They found that the frequency of repairs did not differ across levels of proficiency. Repair phenomena also tend to be associated with speakers' L1 speaking style (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016), and consequently they might serve as less reliable cues for listeners than speed, breakdown, and composite measures. ...
Listener-based judgements of fluency play an important role in second language (L2) communication contexts and in L2 assessment. Accordingly, our meta-analysis examined the relationship between different aspects of utterance fluency and listener-based judgements of perceived fluency by analyzing primary studies reporting correlation coefficients between objective measures of temporal features and subjective ratings of fluency. We analyzed 263 effect sizes from 22 studies (N = 335-746) to calculate the mean effect sizes of the links between utterance and perceived fluency. We also investigated the moderator effects of 11 methodological factors, such as speech stimuli, listeners' background, rating procedure, and computation of utterance fluency measures, on the relationship between utterance and perceived fluency. Perceived fluency was strongly associated with speed and pause frequency (r = |.59-62|), moderately with pause duration (r = |.46|), and weakly with repair fluency (r = |.20|). Composite measures showed the strongest effect sizes (r = |.72-.76|). Moderator analyses revealed that the utterance-perceived fluency link is influenced by methodological variables related to how speech samples are prepared for listeners' judgements and how listeners' attention is directed in evaluations of fluency. These findings suggest future directions for L2 fluency research and implications for language assessment.
... Monitoring is rarely studied as a dimension of L2-specific cognitive fluency or in terms of its relationship to utterance fluency. However, some monitoringrelated features (e.g., repetitions and self-corrections) have been found language-independent rather than L2-specific (Peltonen and Lintunen, 2016;Georgiadou and Roehr-Brackin, 2017;Olkkonen, 2017). ...
... Koska korjauksilla on erilaisia funktioita ja niiden käytössä yksilöllisiä eroja, puhetuotoksen määrällistä mittaamista on hyvä täydentää yksityiskohtaisella laadullisella analyysillä (esim. Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016) sekä kognitiivisen sujuvuuden mittareilla (esim. Olkkonen, 2017). ...
This review in Finnish discusses speech fluency in second language research. We emphasize the need for multidisciplinary research, both quantitative and qualitative analyses, and comparing multilingual samples from the same speakers.
... As shown in different studies, repetitions are good tools for creating time, structuring, and connecting utterances (Barr & Keysar, 2002;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). In this study, speakers in GA repeated words and phrases more, both separately and in clusters, compared to groups with lower fluency skills (GB; GC). ...
This study first aimed to investigate disfluency clusters in typical and atypical Finnish adult speakers. Secondly, it aimed to observe possible fluency strategies in speakers representing different fluency levels. In addition to individual disfluency types, we examined different characteristics of disfluency clusters produced by 23 speakers in a fluency continuum. Three adult speaker groups participated in this study: typical speakers with high disfluency frequencies (GA), typical and atypical speakers with very high disfluency frequencies (GB) and atypical speakers with the highest disfluency frequencies (GC). Data were based on a narrative speech task, and disfluency clusters were analysed with both traditional methods and alternative methods. Two statistically significant differences between the speaker groups were found: 1) the length of the clusters was highest in GC compared to other groups, and 2) speakers in GC formulated their utterances more than other groups. Other results, although nonsignificant, were that 3) speakers in GA revised utterances more often than interrupted them compared to GB and GC speakers, and 4) clusters using repetitive words and phrases to maintain fluency were found in GA and GB only. In this study, different fluency levels revealed different strategies in both the production of single disfluencies and in disfluency clusters. It seems that more fluent speakers formulate their messages differently than less fluent speakers, and repetitions can be used to maintain fluency and possibly prevent difficult clusters, as noted with more fluent speakers.
... Algılanan akıcılık dinleyicilerin konuşucun bilişsel akıcılığıyla ilgili yaptıkları çıkarımlara gönderimde bulunur (bkz. Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005;Segalowitz, 2010;Peltonen & Lintunen, 2015). ...
Türkçeyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen kişiler Türkiye'de günlük yaşamlarını sürdürebilmek için Türkçe konuşan kişilerle sözlü iletişim kurar. Anadili Türkçe olmayan kişilerin kendilerini anlatabilmesi için akıcı konuşmaları son derece önemlidir. Çünkü akıcı konuşma becerisi sözlü dil yetkinliğinin en önemli göstergelerinden biridir. Bu bakımdan akıcı konuşmayla ilgili araştırmalara gereksinim vardır. Bu çalışmanın da amacı, yabancı dil olarak Türkçe öğrenmekte olan farklı düzeydeki öğrencilerin konuşma akıcılıklarına ilişkin algılarında cinsiyet, sınıf düzeyi, sosyal medya ve dil kullanma sıklığı gibi değişkenlerin etkili olup olmadığını saptamaktır. Bu araştırmanın verileri Google Forms ile toplam yüz doksan bir katılımcıdan toplanmıştır. Katılımcıların yüz altısı kız, seksen beşi erkektir. Araştırmanın amacına uygun olarak veri toplayabilmek için araştırmacı tarafından bir sormaca geliştirilmiştir. Bu sormaca yirmi iki madde içeren beşli Likert tipinde bir veri toplama aracıdır. Sormacanın güvenirliği için Cronbach's Alpha katsayısı hesaplanmış ve bu katsayı .943 olarak bulunmuştur. Elde edilen verilerin çözümlenmesiyle ortaya çıkan bulgulara göre öğrenciler konuşma hızı bakımından kendilerini daha iyi görmektedirler. Buna karşın onarım boyutu bakımından ise kendilerini daha kötü görmektedirler. Öğrencilerin sormacadaki tüm maddelere ilişkin ortalama puanları 3.48'dir. Öğrenciler onarım ve bozulma alt boyutlarında kendilerini ortalamanın altında görürken hız ve doğruluk boyutlarında ise ortalamanın üzerinde görmektedirler. Kur, sosyal medya kullanımı ve günlük yaşamda Türkçe kullanma sıklığı algılanan akıcılığı etkilemektedir. Anahtar Sözcükler: Konuşma, akıcı konuşma, söyleyiş akıcılığı. Abstract People who learn Turkish as a foreign language communicates with the Turkish-speaking people to maintain their daily living in Turkey. Speech fluency is extremely important for people whose mother tongue is not Turkish to express themselves because fluency is one of the most important indicators of oral language competence. In this regard, research is needed on speech fluency. The aim of this study was to determine the perceptions of students at different levels of learning Turkish as a foreign language about speech fluency and whether gender, classroom level, social media use and language use have an effect on these perceptions. Data of this research was collected from 191 participants via Google forms. One hundred and six of the participants were female and eighty-five were male. A questionnaire was developed by the researcher in order to collect data for the purpose of the research. This questionnaire is a five-point Likert type data collection tool containing twenty-two items. In terms of reliability, Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was calculated and found to be .943. According to the data collected, students perceived themselves better in terms of speech rate. However, they considered themselves worse in terms of repair size. The average score of all students was 3.48. Students saw themselves below the average according to the repair and deterioration sub-dimensions, and above the average in rate and accuracy dimensions. The level of classroom, the use of social media, and the frequency of using Turkish in daily life affect the perceived fluency.
... Sujumattomuuksista sanan-ja fraasintoistojen on taas havaittu liittyvän kielenoppijoilla puhetyyliin ja strategioihin pikemminkin kuin heikkoon kielitaitoon (Peltonen & Lintunen, 2016). Peltonen ja Lintunen (2016) päättelivätkin, että kielenoppijat välttelevät pitkiä hiljaisia taukoja toistamalla sanottavaansa, mikä palvelee viestin välittymistä. ...
Fluency is considered to be language performance that includes motor, linguistic and
cognitive processes. In speech-language pathology, both the clinical and the research
practice, auditory-perceptual judgments and instrumental measurements are used to
assess different aspects of disordered fluency. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is defined
as an impairment in brain function due to an external physical force, and impaired
brain function in TBI typically includes difficulties with both motor and higher cognitive functions. This study investigates speech fluency in Finnish adult speakers to
identify the features that makes fluency either typical or disordered.
The participants included a group of speech and language pathologists (SLPs) as
listeners and three groups of speakers, namely, a control group (CG) representing
typical Finnish speakers and two groups representing speakers with TBI with (Group
B) and without neurogenic stuttering (Group A). Speech fluency was evaluated using
narrative discourse samples. Fluency of speech was first assessed perceptually by
SLPs on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). If the judges rated speech fluency of a participant as less than average, then the judges were asked to report if speech rate, pauses,
stuttering, language difficulties or something else alone or in different combinations affected their decisions. Secondly, the speech samples were analyzed for disfluencies, disfluency frequencies, and disfluency clusters, as well as for the relationships between
various disfluencies.
The CG differed statistically from Groups A and B based on perceptual assessments. The mean fluency rating for the typical speech was 8.2; for disordered speech,
the rating was 4.3 (GA); and for speech with neurogenic stuttering, it was 3.4 (GB).
As the number of perceived features increased, the fluency rate decreased in all the
speaker groups. A significant correlation between fluency ratings and pauses was
found in both CG and GB. In typical speakers (CG) the most common disfluency
type was hesitation, and the mean disfluency frequency was 2.3 %. As disfluency
frequency increased, the most common disfluency type changed. Speakers in GA
had a mean disfluency frequency of 15.5 %, and interruptions and interjections were
the two most common types of disfluency. Speakers in GB presented almost twice
as many disfluencies 27.5 % as GA. The two most common disfluency types were
interjections and stuttering-like disfluencies. The disfluency clusters were longer in
those speakers with neurogenic stuttering (GB), although the stuttering itself did not
increase the number of clusters. Disfluency frequencies and perceptual fluency ratings correlated in each speaker group.
The most interesting finding was the detection of a borderline group (n=13)
based on the auditory-perceptual fluency ratings of SLPs. This group included speakers from all three groups. The fluency rating for this group was 6.5 (range between
5.6–7.3). The most frequently mentioned factor was something else. The measured disfluency frequencies from the speech samples for these 13 speakers varied from 1.0
% to 15.9 %. The disfluency frequencies and perceptual fluency ratings did not correlate with each other. However, this borderline for fluency inspired us to observe
typical speakers with high disfluency frequencies as well as speakers with TBI with
low disfluency frequencies. The disfluency frequency for the most nonfluent typical
speaker was 7.8 %, while it was 7.0 % for the most fluent brain injury speaker. For
these speakers, interruptions and revisions were the most common disfluency types.
To conclude, fluency is a multifaceted phenomenon that manifests as a continuum with variations between the different disfluencies. Therefore, in both research
and clinical practice, it is important to pay more attention to the most nonfluent
typical speakers. Secondly, the boundary between typical to atypical fluency is neither
strict nor black-and-white; instead, the change from typical to atypical seems to pass
through a grey borderline area. Third, although the SLPs differentiated typical fluency from the atypical, assessing the features’ affecting fluency was difficult. Finally,
the communicational aspects of disfluencies, as functional tools for maintaining fluency, should be worthwhile considering. To achieve this purpose, these disfluencies
should be evaluated in clusters instead of separately.
The article presents an exploratory cross-modal analysis of fluency profiles in spoken and written first (L1, Finnish) and second (L2, English) language production of the same language users. Our data come from two research projects, from which we identified 11 university students participating in both. The spoken tasks consisted of monologue picture description (analysed with Praat), and the written tasks were short argumentative essays (collected and analysed with keystroke logging software GGXLog). Based on commonly used measures to capture different aspects of spoken and written fluency, we used a set of 14 measures (seven for speech fluency, seven for writing fluency) to examine fluency across modes comprehensively. Four profiles were identified from the data: (1) fast and productive, (2) fast, (3) slow and productive, and (4) slow and reflective. Six speakers had the same profile in the L1 and L2, and seven writers had the same profile in the L1 and L2. Only one participant had the same profile in the L1 and L2 speaking and writing. The results suggest that the cross-modal differences are greater than the differences between languages. The modalities are inherently different, which is also reflected in individual variation between the modalities.
Technologies, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Learning Post-COVID-19: The Crucial Role of International Accreditation
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-93921-2
A review in Finnish on early language learning and how L2 pronunciation can be approached and the factors affecting young learners' L2 pronunciation learning.
Final version available: https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/152526
This study proposes using YouTube as a multimedia learning tool to provide and enhance (by way of captioned videos) what is known as the comprehensible input of the target language (in this case English) required for the learners’ language proficiency development. This correlational study hypothesizes that ESL learners’ engagement with and exposure to (by way of the narrow listening technique) the provided and enhanced multimedia-based comprehensible input can potentially increase their gain of the target language chunks and ultimately improve their L2 oral fluency over time. In this work, a battery of 17 quantifiable performance variables of both quantitative and qualitative nature were employed to examine the oral fluency progress of (the same group i.e., treatment group of learners using a One-Group Pretest–Posttest Design (O1 X1 O2)) 14 bilingual Arabic ESL learners of intermediate English proficiency level based in New Delhi, India over a period of 5 months. Findings of this study revealed that the use of ICT-based multimedia learning tools like YouTube captioned-videos could make (new) L2 aural input not only more comprehensible but also more chunkable for learners as they narrowly listened to it, which may very likely have resulted in a more fluent L2 speech or oral output due to the increase of learners’ L2 intake which could have accrued over time, given that these learners were engaging with and frequently exposed to such L2 multi-mediated input. It was concluded with some statistical evidence that ICTs like YouTube can be helpful for ESL learners and thus recommended for optimization of their oral fluency.
Many factors influencing second language (L2) speech fluency have been widely studied, but the effects of first language (L1) fluency on L2 speech fluency are still relatively poorly understood. In contrast to mostly quantitative previous studies, the present study adopted a mixed methods approach to examining the connections between L1 fluency and L2 fluency. Monologue speech samples in L1 and L2 were obtained from 42 Finnish learners of English at 2 school levels (9th grade and upper secondary school). The samples were examined for 13 measures capturing different aspects of fluency: temporal fluency, including speed and pausing, and stalling mechanisms. The results indicated positive correlations between the majority of temporal L1 and L2 fluency measures. Regression analyses further demonstrated that most temporal L2 fluency measures could be predicted from L1 fluency measures to a certain extent, although the predictive power varied across the measures. Regarding stalling mechanisms, a complementary qualitative analysis provided insights to idiosyncratic patterns in their use in L1 and L2. Together, the findings suggest that L1 fluency is an important factor in explaining L2 fluency and should be more widely acknowledged in L2 fluency research, assessment, and teaching.
This book takes a new and holistic approach to fluency in English speech and differentiates between productive, perceptive, and nonverbal fluency. The in-depth corpus-based description of productive fluency points out major differences of how fluency is established in native and nonnative speech. It also reveals areas in which even highly advanced learners of English still deviate strongly from the native target norm and in which they have already approximated to it. Based on these findings, selected learners are subjected to native speakers' ratings of seven perceptive fluency variables in order to test which variables are most responsible for a perception of oral proficiency on the sides of the listeners. Finally, language-pedagogical implications derived from these findings for the improvement of fluency in learner language are presented. This book is conceptually and methodologically relevant for corpus-linguistics, learner corpus research and foreign language teaching and learning.
Second language (L2) research often involves analyses of acoustic measures of fluency. The studies investigating fluency, however, have been difficult to compare because the measures of fluency that were used differed widely. One of the differences between studies concerns the lower cutoff point for silent pauses, which has been set anywhere between 100 ms and 1000 ms. The goal of this paper is to find an optimal cutoff point. We calculate acoustic measures of fluency using different pause thresholds and then relate these measures to a measure of L2 proficiency and to ratings on fluency. Index Terms: silent pauses, number of pauses, duration of pauses, silent pause threshold, second language speech.
The last decade has seen a growing body of research investigating various aspects of L2 learners’ performance of tasks. This book focuses on one task implementation variable: planning. It considers theories of how opportunities to plan a task affect performance and tests claims derived from these theories in a series of empirical studies. The book examines different types of planning (i.e. task rehearsal, pre-task planning and within-task planning), addressing both what learners do when they plan and the effects of the different types of planning on L2 production. The choice of planning as the variable for investigation in this book is motivated both by its importance for current theorizing about L2 acquisition (in particular with regard to cognitive theories that view acquisition in terms of information processing) and its utility to language teachers and language testers, for unlike many other constructs in SLA ‘planning’ lends itself to external manipulation. The study of planning, then, provides a suitable forum for demonstrating the interconnectedness of theory, research and pedagogy in SLA.
Complexity, accuracy, and fluency have proved useful measures of second language performance. The present article will re-examine these measures themselves, arguing that fluency needs to be rethought if it is to be measured effectively, and that the three general measures need to be supplemented by measures of lexical use. Building upon this discussion, generalizations are reviewed which focus on inter-relationships between the measures, especially between accuracy and complexity, since positive correlations between these two areas have been less common in the literature. Some examples of accu-racy–complexity correlations are reviewed. The central issue here is how to account for these correlations, and so the discussion explores rival claims from the Cognition and Trade-off Hypotheses. It is argued that such joint raised performance between accuracy and complexity is not a function of task difficulty, as the Cognition Hypothesis would predict, but that instead it reflects the joint operation of separate task and task condition factors. Extending the theoretical discussion, connection is made with the Levelt model of first language speaking, and it is proposed that the results obtained in the task-based performance literature can be linked to this model, modified to take account of differences between first and second language processing, particularly as these stem from differences in the underlying mental lexicons.
The oral fluency level of an L2 speaker is often used as a measure in assessing language proficiency. The present study reports on four experiments investigating the contributions of three fluency aspects (pauses, speed and repairs) to perceived fluency. In Experiment 1 untrained raters evaluated the oral fluency of L2 Dutch speakers. Using specific acoustic measures of pause, speed and repair phenomena, linear regression analyses revealed that pause and speed measures best predicted the subjective fluency ratings, and that repair measures contributed only very little. A second research question sought to account for these results by investigating perceptual sensitivity to acoustic pause, speed and repair phenomena, possibly accounting for the results from Experiment 1. In Experiments 2–4 three new groups of untrained raters rated the same L2 speech materials from Experiment 1 on the use of pauses, speed and repairs. A comparison of the results from perceptual sensitivity (Experiments 2–4) with fluency perception (Experiment 1) showed that perceptual sensitivity alone could not account for the contributions of the three aspects to perceived fluency. We conclude that listeners weigh the importance of the perceived aspects of fluency to come to an overall judgment.
This paper analyses the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of L2 oral tasks on language production. It specifically focuses on self-repairs, which are taken as a measure of accuracy since they denote both attention to form and an attempt at being accurate. By means of a repeated measures design, 42 lower-intermediate students were asked to perform three different tasks types (a narrative, and instruction-giving task, and a decision-making task) for which two degrees of cognitive complexity were established. The narrative task was manipulated along +/- Here-and-Now, an instruction-giving task manipulated along +/- elements, and the decision-making task which is manipulated along +/- reasoning demands. Repeated measures ANOVAs are used for the calculation of differences between degrees of complexity and among task types. One-way ANOVA are used to detect potential differences between low-proficiency and high-proficiency participants. Results show an overall effect of Task Complexity on self-repairs behavior across task types, with different behaviors existing among the three task types. No differences are found between the self-repair behavior between low and high proficiency groups. Results are discussed in the light of theories of cognition and L2 performance (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2005, 2007), L1 and L2 language production models (Levelt 1989, 1993; Kormos 2000, 2006), and attention during L2 performance (Skehan 1998; Robinson, 2002).
Recent research (Crookes, 1989: Foster and Skehan, 1996) has focused on the role of planning when tasks are used within language instruction. These studies have indicated that pre-task planning can have beneficial effects upon the nature of task performance, consistently leading to greater fluency and complexity and, less dependably, greater accuracy. The present study examines different sources of planning (teacher-led, solitary, group-based) as well as different foci for planning (towards language or towards content). Using a decision-making task (a ‘balloon debate’), data was collected using a 2×2 research design contrasting source of planning (teacher-led, group) and focus of planning (language vs content). In addition, to ensure comparability with previous research, solitary planning and control groups were also used. Results indicate a number of statistically significant effects. The teacher-fronted condition generated significant accuracy effects, while the solitary planning condition had greater influence on complexity, fluency and turn length. Group-based planning did not lead to performance significantly different from the control group. Finally, there was little effect on performance as a result of the language vs content planning condition. The results are discussed in relation to how teachers may more effectively make pedagogic decisions on task implementation conditions linked to selective pedagogic goals.
In second language (L2) research and testing, measures of oral fluency are used as diagnostics for proficiency. However, fluency is also determined by personality or speaking style, raising the question to what extent L2 fluency measures are valid indicators of L2 proficiency. In this study, we obtained a measure of L2 (Dutch) proficiency (vocabulary knowledge), L2 fluency measures, and fluency measures that were corrected for first language behavior from the same group of Turkish and English native speakers (N = 51). For most measures of fluency, except for silent pause duration, both the corrected and the uncorrected measures significantly predicted L2 proficiency. For syllable duration, the corrected measure was a stronger predictor of L2 proficiency than was the uncorrected measure. We conclude that for L2 research purposes, as well as for some types of L2 testing, it is useful to obtain corrected measures of syllable duration to measure L2-specific fluency.
In this paper we present a possible multi-method approach towards the description of a potential correlation between errors and temporal variables of (dys-)fluency in spoken learner language. Using the German subcorpus of the
Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage
(LINDSEI) and the native control corpus
Louvain Corpus of Native English Conversation
(LOCNEC), we first analysed errors and temporal variables of fluency quantitatively. We detected lexical and grammatical categories which are especially error-prone as well as problematic aspects of fluency for all learners in the LINDSEI subcorpus, e.g. confusion in tense agreement across clauses or an overuse of unfilled pauses. In the ensuing qualitative analysis of five prototypical learners, no trend for a possible correlation of accuracy and fluency could be observed. Fifty native speakers’ ratings of these five learners revealed that the learner with an average performance across the investigated variables received the highest ratings for overall oral proficiency.
A fundamental question in the study of second language (L2) fluency is the extent to which temporal characteristics of speakers’ first language (L1) productions predict the same characteristics in the L2. A close relationship between a speaker’s L1 and L2 temporal characteristics would suggest that fluency is governed by an underlying trait. This longitudinal investigation compared L1 and L2 English fluency at three times over 2 years in Russian- and Ukrainian- (which we will refer to here as Slavic) and Mandarin-speaking adult immigrants to Canada. Fluency ratings of narratives by trained judges indicated a relationship between the L1 and the L2 in the initial stages of L2 exposure, although this relationship was found to be stronger in the Slavic than in the Mandarin learners. Pauses per second, speech rate, and pruned syllables per second were all related to the listeners’ judgments in both languages, although vowel durations were not. Between-group differences may reflect differential exposure to spoken English and a closer relationship between Slavic languages and English than between Mandarin and English. Suggestions for pedagogical interventions and further research are also proposed.
The present study investigated the use of five speech markers in the native and second language production of French-English bilinguals in a military setting. We propose that these speech markers, mechanisms for self-repair and turn-taking in conversations, are a major component of fluency. The ten participants, five high fluency speakers and five low fluency speakers, were tape-recorded with their peers in three different situations in their native and second languages, and the frequency of occurrence of speech markers was tabulated for a 5-minute segment for each situation.
It was hypothesized that speakers who used differentially more prepositioned repairs (progressives) or markers placed before the repair that do not require a reorganization of the expectation of what is to follow based on what has been produced in the turn so far, would be judged more favourably than those who used more postpositioned repairs (regressives). There was no quantitative difference in the frequency of occurrence of speech markers between the high and low fluency speakers, but the high fluency speakers used more progressive than regressive types of marker. Progressive markers place fewer demands on the interlocutor than regressive markers, which require constant readjustments on the part of the listener. The profiles were similar for each individual in the native and second language but in every case there were fewer markers in the native than in the second language. Furthermore, there were fewer markers in the planned (teaching) than in the unplanned (interview) situation. The findings have important implications for the evaluation of second language fluency.
This article is organised in five main sections. First, the sub-area of task-based instruction is introduced and contextualised. Its origins within communicative language teaching and second language acquisition research are sketched, and the notion of a task in language learning is defined. There is also brief coverage of the different and sometimes contrasting groups who are interested in the use of tasks. The second section surveys research into tasks, covering the different perspectives (interactional, cognitive) which have been influential. Then a third section explores how performance on tasks has been measured, generally in terms of how complex the language used is, how accurate it is, and how fluent. There is also discussion of approaches to measuring interaction. A fourth section explores the pedagogic and interventionist dimension of the use of tasks. The article concludes with a survey of the various critiques of tasks that have been made in recent years.
This paper describes two experiments aimed at exploring the relationship between objective properties of speech and perceived fluency in read and spontaneous speech. The aim is to determine whether such quantitative measures can be used to develop objective fluency tests. Fragments of read speech (Experiment 1) of 60 non-native speakers of Dutch and of spontaneous speech (Experiment 2) of another group of 57 non-native speakers of Dutch were scored for fluency by human raters and were analyzed by means of a continuous speech recognizer to calculate a number of objective measures of speech quality known to be related to perceived fluency. The results show that the objective measures investigated in this study can be employed to predict fluency ratings, but the predictive power of such measures is stronger for read speech than for spontaneous speech. Moreover, the adequacy of the variables to be employed appears to be dependent on the specific type of speech material investigated and the specific task performed by the speaker.
This book explores the importance of cross-linguistic similarity in foreign language learning. While linguists have primarily focussed upon differences between languages, learners strive to make use of any similarities to prior linguistic knowledge they can perceive. The role of positive transfer is emphasized as well as the essential differences between comprehension and production. In comprehension of related languages, cross-linguistic similarities are easily perceived while in comprehension of distant languages they are merely assumed. Production may be based on previous perception of similarities, but frequently similarities are here merely assumed. Initially, effective learning is based on quick establishment of cross-linguistic one-to-one relations between individual items. As learning progresses, the learner learns to modify such oversimplified relations. The book describes the ways in which transfer affects different areas of language, taking account of the differences between learning a language perceived to be similar and a language where few or no cross-linguistic similarities can be established.
A cogent, freshly written synthesis of new and classic work on crosslinguistic influence, or language transfer, this book is an authoritative account of transfer in second-language learning and its consequences for language and thought. It covers transfer in both production and comprehension, and discusses the distinction between semantic and conceptual transfer, lateral transfer, and reverse transfer. The book is ideal as a text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in bilingualism, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and cognitive psychology, and will also be of interest to researchers in these areas.
This chapter presents an overview of a number of perspectives on individual differences in language ability and language behavior from a linguistic point of view, together with a preliminary formulation of a set of research questions that these perspectives bring to mind. The two senses of competence known to people that is familiar with recent theorizing on language parallel two approaches to the study of individual differences in language behavior. The chapter discusses many different ways of being fluent in a language. It also discusses the problem of devising tests for measuring degrees of fluency. The word fluency seems to cover a wide range of language abilities; these are best described with terms like articulateness, volubility, eloquence, wit, garrulousness, etc.
Written in readable, vivid, non-technical prose, this book, first published in 2007, presents the highly respected scholarly research that forms the foundation for Deborah Tannen's best-selling books about the role of language in human relationships. It provides a clear framework for understanding how ordinary conversation works to create meaning and establish relationships. A significant theoretical and methodological contribution to both linguistic and literary analysis, it uses transcripts of tape-recorded conversation to demonstrate that everyday conversation is made of features that are associated with literary discourse: repetition, dialogue, and details that create imagery. This second edition features a new introduction in which the author shows the relationship between this groundbreaking work and the research that has appeared since its original publication in 1989. In particular, she shows its relevance to the contemporary topic 'intertextuality', and provides a useful summary of research on that topic.
Actual, Perceived, and Assumed SimilaritiesTypes of Cross-Linguistic Similarity RelationshipsItem Transfer and System Transfer in Comprehension, Learning, and ProductionImplications for TeachingReferencesFurther Reading
This paper reports on a comparative study of pauses made by L2 learners and native speakers of English while narrating picture
stories. The comparison is based on the number of pauses and total amount of silence in the middle and at the end of clauses
in the performance of 40 native speakers and 40 L2 learners of English.1 The results of the quantitative analyses suggest that, although the L2 learners generally pause more repeatedly and have
longer periods of silence than the native speakers, the distinctive feature of their pausing pattern is that they pause frequently
in the middle of clauses rather than at the end. The qualitative analysis of the data suggests that some of the L2 learners’
mid-clause pauses are associated with processes such as replacement, reformulation, and online planning. Formulaic sequences,
however, contain very few pauses and therefore appear to facilitate the learners’ fluency.
Although fluency constitutes an essential component of second language (L2) proficiency, there are mixed results and gaps in the literature on how L2 speakers’ fluency differs from fluent speech production in a first language (L1). The research reported in this article investigated utterance fluency and cognitive fluency of L1 English speakers and Korean learners of L2 English by eliciting and comparing quantitative evidence from temporal measures and qualitative evidence from stimulated recall responses. In addition, the L2 speaker group's proficiency was measured by an in-house institutional test so as to inspect how L2 fluency measures correlated to varying proficiency. The L1 and L2 speakers were different in speed, length of run, and silent pauses. In particular, a striking group difference in silent pause rate within a clause was found, consistent with the claim that pauses within clauses reflect processing difficulties in speech production. Different qualitative patterns in the stimulated recall responses by the lower and higher proficiency learners are discussed in relation to Ullman's declarative/procedural model and Segalowitz's fluency vulnerability points in L2 speech production.
Recent literature in second language (L2) perceived fluency has focused on English as a second language, with a primary reliance on impressions from native-speaker judges, leaving learners' self-perceptions of speech production unexplored. This study investigates the relationship between learners' and judges' perceptions of French fluency under three different task conditions. It also addresses how self-perception of fluency is linked to actual measures of utterance fluency. Participants were 40 adult learners of French at varying levels of proficiency, studying in a university immersion context. The results indicate moderate correlation between L2 learners' and judges' perceptions of fluency and offer evidence to validate self-assessment use in language-learning contexts. Across tasks, two measures of utterance fluency were most strongly related to self-perceptions of fluency: mean length of runs and average pause time. The results also revealed the influence of task complexity on L2 fluent performance and are discussed according to the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001, 2003, 2005).
This article presents the methodology adopted for transcribing and quantifying temporal fluency phenomena in a spoken L2 corpus (L2 English, French, and Italian by learners of different proficiency levels). The CHILDES suite is being used for transcription and anal-ysis, and we have adapted the CHAT format in order to code disfluencies as precisely as possible. We briefly present findings for two extreme subgroups in the corpus—our most hesitant and least hesitant learners—and compare the major differences in the temporal structure of the speech of these two learner groups with a native-speaker control group. Implications of these findings for the automatic assessment of spoken fluency will be discussed.
This study investigated how task complexity affected native and non-native speakers’ speaking performance in terms of a measure of communicative success (functional adequacy), three types of fluency (breakdown fluency, speed fluency, and repair fluency), and lexical diversity. Participants (208 non-native and 59 native speakers of Dutch) carried out four simple and four complex speaking tasks. Task complexity was found to affect the three types of fluency in different ways, and differently for native and non-native speakers. With respect to lexical complexity, both native and non-native speakers produced a wider range of words in complex tasks compared to simple tasks. Results for functional adequacy revealed that non-native speakers scored higher on simple tasks, whereas native speakers scored higher on complex tasks. We recommend that, in future research examining effects of task types on task performance, the notion of functional adequacy be included.
The paper aims to explore the effect of individual speaking style on the self-correction behaviour of L2 speakers. The project reported in the paper involved 30 Hungarian learners of English of varying levels of proficiency and made use of self-report data. The results obtained from the analysis of a wide range of variables did not support the assumptions of previous studies as the difference between accuracy- and fluency-centred speakers did not manifest itself in the global frequency of self-repairs. The two types of learners were found to differ in how frequently they produced rephrasing-repairs, which involve uncertainty about the correctness of their utterance, in the proportion of the errors they corrected, and in the speed with which they uttered their message. The findings suggest that accuracy-centred participants tended to pay more attention to monitoring at the expense of the other speech production processes, while fluency-centred learners allocated more attention to speedy production and focused less on intercepting errors. The paper also points out that L2 learners with differing speech habits may make conscious decisions not to correct an error with varying frequency.
This article explores perceptions of the speaking fluency of 24 adult ESL learners (11 men, 13 women) who narrated picture stories at Time 1 and again 10 weeks later at Time 2. One-minute excerpts from each rendition were randomized and played to 15 novice and six expert native speakers of English (undergraduate education students and experienced ESL teachers holding graduate degrees, respectively). Because of the increasingly frequent use of English among non-native speakers (NNSs) throughout the world, 15 advanced NNSs of English were also included in the study. All three groups of listeners rated and recorded their impressions of the fluency of the stimuli. The ratings of all three groups were highly inter-correlated at Times 1 and 2. Fluency ratings correlated with the temporal measures of total pause per second and pruned syllables per second. Pausing, self-repetition, speech rate, and fillers accounted for three-quarters of the negative temporal impressions recorded by listeners; salient non-temporal impressions included pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. © 2009 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes,.
The analysis of spoken language requires a principled way of dividing transcribed data into units in order to assess features such as accuracy and complexity. If such analyses are to be comparable across different studies, there must be agreement on the nature of the unit, and it must be possible to apply this unit reliably to a range of different types of speech data. There are a number of different units in use, the various merits of which have been discussed by Crookes (1990). However, while these have been used to facilitate the analysis of spoken language data, there is presently no comprehensive, accessible definition of any of them, nor are detailed guides available on how to identify such units in data sets. Research reports tend to provide simplistic two-line definitions of units exemplified, if at all, by unproblematic written examples. These are inadequate when applied to transcriptions of complex oral data, which tend not to lend themselves easily to a clear division into units. This paper was motivated by the need each of the three authors felt for a reliable and comprehensively defined unit to assist with they analysis of a variety of recordings of native and non-native speakers of English. We first discuss in very general terms the criteria according to which such a unit might be selected. Next, we examine the main categories of unit which have been adopted previously and provide a justification for the particular type of unit that we have chosen. Focusing on this unit, we identify a number of problems which are associated with the definition and exemplification of units of this type, and give examples of the awkward cases found in actual data. Finally we offer a definition of our unit, the Analysis of Speech Unit (AS-unit), providing adequate detail to address the problematic data analyses we have illustrated
In spite of the vast numbers of articles devoted to vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language, few studies address the contribution of lexical knowledge to spoken fluency. The present article begins with basic definitions of the temporal characteristics of oral fluency, summarizing L1 research over several decades, and then presents fluency findings from a corpus of oral productions in three different L2s. Investigation of disfluencies in the corpus (the distribution of long hesitations and two types of retracing) reveal the fundamental role of ‘lexical competence’ in spoken fluency, which should, it is argued, be taken more thoroughly into account in our language-teaching programmes.
This paper investigates the various waysspeakers manage problems and overcome difficulties in L2 communication. FollowingDörnyei and Scott (1997), we distinguish four main sources of L2 communicationproblems: (a) resource deficits, (b) processing time pressure, (c) perceived deficiencies inone's own language output, and (d) perceived deficiencies in the interlocutor'sperformance. In order to provide a systematic description of the wide range of copingmechanisms associated with these problem areas (e.g., communication strategies, meaningnegotiation mechanisms, hesitation devices, repair mechanisms), we adopt a psycholinguisticapproach based on Levelt's (1989, 1993, 1995) model of speech production.Problem-solving devices, then, are analyzed and classified according to how they are related tothe different pre- and post-articulatory phases of speech processing, and we illustrate the variousmechanisms by examples and retrospective comments taken from L2 learners' data.
There have been few attempts to specify precisely what fluency is, although it is a term that is used and understood by both laypeople and linguists. With one objective being to achieve a greater understanding of what comprises fluency, this study explores the speech of six nonnative speakers of English who had been rated by English instructors as either “fluent” or “nonfluent.” Excerpts of audiotaped dialogues were analyzed, both at the utterance level and at the discourse level, in terms of the frequency and possible function of features that have often been ascribed to fluency (hesitation phenomena, repair, and rate of speech). More functionally oriented pragmatic features that relate to topic control and initiation were also examined.Comparison of subgroups on the basis of perceived fluency or lack of fluency provided few statistically significant results, although the findings of qualitative analyses suggest that fluency is a complex, high‐order linguistic phenomenon and that intuitive judgments about fluency level—such as those made by the raters for this study—may take into account a wide range of linguistic phenomena. Thus, this study offers an innovative approach to understanding fluency, with possibly implications for the teaching and testing of languages, as well as for research on second language acquisition processes.
The present study examines the relationship between second language (L2) proficiency and
pausing patterns (i.e., pause duration, frequency, and distribution) in the speech of 30 Russian
speakers of English performing two oral tasks—a topic narrative and a cartoon
description—in Russian and in English. The subjects were divided into two oral English
proficiency groups, high and intermediate, on the basis of a standardized test of spoken English.
Baseline data were collected from a control group of 20 native English speakers. Statistical
analyses were performed to determine: (a) the native norms of pause duration, frequency, and
distribution for Russian and English on the two experimental tasks; (b) the effect of the level of
L2 proficiency (high and intermediate) on the pausing of Russian speakers in English; and (c) the
differences or similarities in pausing exhibited by native English speakers and native Russian
speakers (with two different levels of English proficiency) when speaking English. The results of
this study indicate that English and Russian informal monologue speech can be characterized as
having different pausing conventions, thus suggesting that crosslinguistic differences involve,
among many other aspects, contrasts in pausing patterns. Additionally, L2 proficiency was found
to affect the pause duration of advanced nonnative speakers in that they were able to adjust the
duration of their pauses in English to produce a nativelike pausing norm. It was also found that
even highly proficient L2 speakers pause more frequently in their L2 than in their first language
(L1). The examination of pause distribution patterns suggests that persons of intermediate to high
L2 speaking proficiency make the same number of within-constituent pauses as native speakers.
Overall, the findings of this study support the view that adherence to the target language pausing
norms may lead to the perception of nonnative speech as more fluent and nativelike. The findings
also highlight the importance of exposing L2 students to a richer variety of situations that
illustrate native patterns of verbal communication.
THIS ARTICLE discusses present trends in the use of English in Finland, paying attention to the specific sociohistorical character of the country with its long history of Finnish-Swedish bilingualism. It has been argued that the other Nordic countries are developing from EFL to ESL countries; is Finland heading the same way? If so, at what stage is the process? We shall first give a brief overview of the theoretical background and of the historical development of the language situation in Finland. The present state of the use of English is outlined next, with the focus on education and on areas where the danger of domain loss is most imminent. At the end we discuss the ongoing changes in terms of the identity-forming function of language and the present diffusion in which the national language does not necessarily play a traditional role.
This paper investigates various easily quantifiable performance features that might function as objective indicators of oral fluency. It would be advantageous if we could assemble a set of variables that functioned as good indicators of what expert judges, such as experienced native‐speaker EFL teachers, are reacting to when subjectively assessing fluency. This would advance our knowledge of what constitutes fluency and especially what makes for perceived fluency differences among learners and how an individual learner improves in fluency over time.
To these ends a sample of the spoken performance of four advanced EFL learners was recorded at the start of six‐months' residence in Britain and again shortly before departure. A panel of 10 native‐speaker teachers of EFL subjectively rated the recordings for global fluency and generally agreed that the second set was more fluent than was the first, though for each subject one or two panel members dissented.
A battery of 12 readily quantifiable performance variables considered to be related to fluency was then assembled. Values per subject per recording were obtained, expressed as frequency rates or as proportions so that comparisons could be made between first and second renderings. For each variable, subjects' scores were compared between the two time points to ascertain in which features improvements were consistently manifested. For each variable t ‐tests were conducted between sample means at Week 2 and Week 23. Improvement of note at the 0.05 level of significance was found for three variables (one‐tailed test), namely, speech rate, filled pauses per T‐Unit, and percentage of T‐Units followed by pause. Surprisingly, self‐corrections did not prove a good indicator.
The implications of the study are that quantitative analysis can indeed help to identify fluency improvements in individual learners, and may have the potential to provide objective assessment of spoken fluency. Findings revealed two key areas of performance that seem to be important for fluency: (1) speech‐pause relationships in performance and (2) frequency of occurrence of dysfluency markers such as filled pauses and repetitions (but not necessarily self‐corrections).
However, even from this small‐scale study it does seem that there is scope for individual variation among subjects in the precise areas in which fluency improvements may occur. Further research might be able to identify both “core” and “peripheral” fluency variables.
Quantitative analysis has applications both as a testing instrument and as a diagnostic tool to identify individual learner strengths and weaknesses among the components of fluency. Investigation of native‐speaker performance might provide native‐like target score ranges on each variable for learners to aim at.
Winner of the 31st Annual Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize, by the Modern Language Association of America, (presented January 7, 2012). Citation: In Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency, Norman Segalowitz takes a concept that permeates many teachers’ and students’ understanding of what it means to learn another language—the quest for fluency—and investigates it from multiple vantage points to provide a nuanced, interdisciplinary perspective. Using a dynamical-systems-theory approach, he explores fluency not as an absolute trait that speakers possess but as a nonlinear phenomenon involving interrelated factors: speakers’ first and second language skills and experiences as well as their emotional and cognitive states when speaking; speakers’ interactions within various social and communicative contexts; and listeners’ perceptions. Carefully organized and clearly written, this volume is filled with thoughtful reinterpretations of previous research and new insights on every page that will be of interest to teachers and researchers alike.
The research reported in this paper explores which variables predict native and non-native speaking teachers' perception of fluency and distinguish fluent from non-fluent L2 learners. In addition to traditional measures of the quality of students' output such as accuracy and lexical diversity, we investigated speech samples collected from 16 Hungarian L2 learners at two distinct levels of proficiency with the help of computer technology. The two groups of students were compared and their temporal and linguistic measures were correlated with the fluency scores they received from three experienced native and three non-native speaker teacher judges. The teachers' written comments concerning the students' performance were also taken into consideration. For all the native and non-native teachers, speech rate, the mean length of utterance, phonation time ratio and the number of stressed words produced per minute were the best predictors of fluency scores. However, the raters differed as regards how much importance they attributed to accuracy, lexical diversity and the mean length of pauses. The number of filled and unfilled pauses and other disfluency phenomena were not found to influence perceptions of fluency.
Fluency is a commonly used notion in foreign language teaching, frequently contrasted with accuracy especially in a communicative language teaching. In ordinary life it often has an extended meaning and is used as a synonym of overall oral proficiency. On the contrary, in the assessment of foreign language proficiency, it is one of several descriptors of oral performance. Despite the belief that we share a common definition as language teachers and researchers, there is some evidence that agreement cannot be taken for granted and various interpretations coexist. The purpose of this paper is to review recent research into the qualitative and quantitative aspects of fluency in order to arrive at a clearer definition of the word, both as a performance descriptor for oral assessment of foreign language learners and as an indicator of progress in language learning. It is suggested that research into temporal variables in speech production provides concrete evidence which can contribute to a more precise definition of fluency. However a purely quantitative definition of fluency does not enable us to discover how to facilitate efficient processes of speech productions. A qualitative, linguistic analysis of the language produced by advanced language learners reveals some of the links between linguistic knowledge and performance skills.
The study reported in this paper is an investigation of the nature of speaking proficiency in English as a second language in the context of a larger project to develop a rating scale for a new international test of English for Academic Purposes, TOEFL iBT (Brown et al. 2005). We report on a large-scale study of the relationship between detailed features of the spoken language produced by test-takers and holistic scores awarded by raters to these performances. Spoken test performances representing five different tasks and five different proficiency levels (200 performances in all) were analyzed using a range of measures of grammatical accuracy and complexity, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. The results showed that features from each category helped distinguish overall levels of performance, with particular features of vocabulary and fluency having the strongest impact. Overall, the study contributes important insights into the nature of spoken proficiency as it develops and can be measured in rating scales for speaking, and has implications for methodological issues of the appropriateness of the use in language testing research contexts of measures developed in research on second language acquisition.
In this article, it will be argued that the proceduralization of linguistic knowledge is the most important factor in the development of fluency in advanced second language learners Levelt's (1989) model of language production is used to provide the descriptive base for the sub-processes of language production This posits the existence of a conceplualizer, a formulator, and an articulator, each of which contains procedural knowledge Levelt's model does not, however, deal with how that knowledge is developed It is proposed that Anderson's (1983) model of adaptive control of thought may be used to account for developmental aspects This posus that the learning process involves the conversion of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge via cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of compilation and tuning Neither Levelt nor Anderson, however, have stated how the contribution of the sub-processes or how the developmental stages may be measured in language use It is argued that the temporal variables used by Grosjean andDeschamps (1972, 1973, 1975) provide a way of fluency and (b) the contribution of the sub-processed in the model Evidece from 12 advanced learners of French and English is used to show how this may be done Initial results from expertments indicate that on a specific task learners became more fluent (as measured by speaking rate) as a result of the period of residence abroad and that an increase in mean length of run was the most important of the temporal variables contributing to this development It is argued that the increase in eman length of run is mainly attributable to the procedurallization of different kinds of knowledge, including procedural knowledge of syntax and of lexical phrases (Nattiger and DeCarnco 1992) The way in which this may have taken place is illustrated by means of extracts from the texts produced by the subjects We conclude that the quantitative and qualitative evidence supports the contention that increases in fluency are attributable mainly to increases in the degree of proceduralization of knowledge
This article examines whether, how and why oral fluency develops at different rates amongst undergraduate learners of French. Twelve subjects were asked to undertake two tasks during their course. The results show that some learners attain higher absolute scores on temporal variable measures than others, but that those who begin at a lower point increase their scores the most. A qualitative analysis of the output of two learners reveals that the learner who most increases her score from a low point does so largely by modifying her pausing behaviour. The learner who increases from a medium to the highest level also modifies her pausing behaviour but, in addition, makes her syntax more complex. Individual factors, such as working memory (Baddeley 1986), are seen to be important for fluency, as has been suggested by N. Ellis (to appear) and Dewaele (1998). A certain level of processing ability may also be required before certain aspects of syntax can be acquired, as argued by Pienemann (1998).
Making a self-repair in speech typically proceeds in three phases. The first phase involves the monitoring of one's own speech and the interruption of the flow of speech when trouble is detected. From an analysis of 959 spontaneous self-repairs it appears that interrupting follows detection promptly, with the exception that correct words tend to be completed. Another finding is that detection of trouble improves towards the end of constituents. The second phase is characterized by hesitation, pausing, but especially the use of so-called editing terms. Which editing term is used depends on the nature of the speech trouble in a rather regular fashion: Speech errors induce other editing terms than words that are merely inappropriate, and trouble which is detected quickly by the speaker is preferably signalled by the use of ‘uh’. The third phase consists of making the repair proper. The linguistic well-formedness of a repair is not dependent on the speaker's respecting the integrity of constituents, but on the structural relation between original utterance and repair. A bi-conditional well-formedness rule links this relation to a corresponding relation between the conjuncts of a coordination. It is suggested that a similar relation holds also between question and answer. In all three cases the speaker respects certain structural commitments derived from an original utterance. It was finally shown that the editing term plus the first word of the repair proper almost always contain sufficient information for the listener to decide how the repair should be related to the original utterance. Speakers almost never produce misleading information in this respect.
The proposal examined here is that speakers use uh and um to announce that they are initiating what they expect to be a minor (uh), or major (um), delay in speaking. Speakers can use these announcements in turn to implicate, for example, that they are searching for a word, are deciding what to say next, want to keep the floor, or want to cede the floor. Evidence for the proposal comes from several large corpora of spontaneous speech. The evidence shows that speakers monitor their speech plans for upcoming delays worthy of comment. When they discover such a delay, they formulate where and how to suspend speaking, which item to produce (uh or um), whether to attach it as a clitic onto the previous word (as in "and-uh"), and whether to prolong it. The argument is that uh and um are conventional English words, and speakers plan for, formulate, and produce them just as they would any word.