Volume 54, Issue 2 - Special Issue: New Directions in L2 Speech Fluency, Editors: Clare Wright and Parvaneh Tavakoli

In studying second language (L2) fluency attainment, researchers typically address questions about temporal and hesitation phenomena in a descriptive manner, cataloguing which features appear under which learning circumstances. The goal of this paper is to present a perspective on L2 fluency that goes beyond description by exploring a potential explanatory framework for understanding L2 fluency. This framework focuses on the cognitive processing that underlies the manifestation of fluency and disfluency, and on the ways social context might contribute to shaping fluency attainment. The framework provides a dynamical systems perspective of fluency and its development, with specific consequences for a research program on L2 fluency. This framework gives rise to new questions because of its focus on the intimate link between cognitive fluency and utterance fluency, that is, between measures of the speed, efficiency and fluidity of the cognitive processes thought to underlie implementation of the speech act and measures of the oral fluency of that speech act. Moreover, it is argued that cognitive and utterance fluency need to be situated in the social context of communication in order to take into account the role played by the pragmatic and the sociolinguistic nature of communication in shaping L2 fluency development.

This article reports a study comparing first and second language fluency during narrative retelling tasks of varying degrees of tightness in structural organisation, exploring in particular a distinction between discourse-based and clause-based fluency. We argue that positive and negative influences on fluency are linked to the Conceptualiser and Formulator stages of Levelt’s model of speaking. Task structure and degree of subordination, which were related to greater fluency for both native and non-native speakers, are Conceptualiser and discourse oriented. Formulaic language, which was also related to fluency, is more Formulator and clause oriented. Contrastingly, higher lexical sophistication and longer clauses are associated with clause-linked fluency problems, but only for native speakers.

This paper compares the distribution of silent and filled pauses in first (L1) and second language (L2) speech. The occurrence of pauses of 52 L2 and 18 L1 Dutch speakers was evaluated with respect to utterance boundaries and word frequency. We found that L2 speakers paused more often than L1 speakers within utterances; but not between utterances. Similarly, only within utterances, L2 pauses were longer than L1 pauses. Regarding word frequency, both L1 and L2 speakers are more likely to pause before lower frequency words as compared to higher frequency words. These findings imply that L1 and L2 speakers’ production processes may be similar in that (1) pauses at utterance boundaries are used for conceptual planning mostly and (2) lexical retrieval difficulties are comparable for L1 and L2 speakers. These findings furthermore imply that when using fluency for L2 testing, pause locations must be taken into account.

The study reported in this paper challenges current models of measuring second language fluency by comparing monologic versus dialogic task performance, and providing a novel insight into the measurement of the interactive aspects of dialogic performance. The data that constitute 35 monologic and dialogic task performances from second language learners were coded using a battery of established measures known to tap different aspects of fluency, and subjected to statistical analysis to test for overlaps or differences. Interactive aspects of fluency in dialogue, e. g. interruptions, overlap and unclaimed between turn pauses were also investigated to compare with common measures of monologic speech. While the results confirm previous research findings suggesting that performance is in general statistically more fluent in a dialogue in terms of speed, length of pause and repair measures, they indicate that performances in the two modes are not different in terms of number and location of pauses. The analysis of the dialogues indicates that the decisions researchers make about measuring the interactive aspects of fluency would have an impact on the outcome of measurements of fluency. These findings highlight the need for developing a more systematic and reliable approach to measuring second language (L2) fluency.

In the field of second language (L2) fluency, there is a common adherence to quantitative methods to examine characteristics and features of speech. This study extends the field by reporting on an investigation that analyzed native-speaker listeners’ perceptions of L2 fluency in French from a qualitative perspective. Three untrained judges rated students’ performance on speech tasks varying in cognitive demand and provided justifications for their perceptions of fluency. The goal of the research was to examine the factors that affect raters’ evaluations of fluency in response to three oral performances from 40 adult learners of French of varying proficiency. Qualitative analysis revealed that the main speech features that influenced native listeners’ perceptions of L2 fluency were speed, rhythm, pause phenomena, self-correction and efficiency/effortlessness in word choice, but also in target-like rhythm and prosody. The results of using such qualitative methodology highlights the important role that rhythm plays in fluency judgements in syllable-timed languages such as French, a factor which has not always been given much prominence in previous L2 fluency quantitative research.