Speech fluency is an essential part of second language (L2) proficiency and assessment. In second language acquisition (SLA) research, fluency has traditionally been examined with respect to three dimensions: objective temporal features of speech (utterance fluency), subjective listener ratings of fluency (perceived fluency), and cognitive processes underlying speech production (cognitive fluency; Segalowitz, 2010). There has also been a growing research interest in the connections between first language (L1) and L2 utterance fluency (e.g., Duran-Karaoz & Tavakoli, 2020; Peltonen, 2018), but the potential influence of L1 speaking style on L2 perceived fluency has not yet been empirically investigated. In addition, examining learners' speech fluency across multiple target languages (L2, L3…) has thus far received little attention (for an exception, see Peltonen & Lintunen, 2022).
The present study addresses these gaps by examining the effects of individual speaking style on both L2 and L3 perceived fluency from a multilingual perspective. The study is part of the project "Fluency across Multilingual Speakers" (MultiFluency; funded by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland). The first data set in the study consists of speech samples from Finnish-speaking (n = 20) university students, who all provided monologue samples in Finnish (L1), English (L2), and Swedish (L3). The second data set consists of fluency assessments of the L2 and L3 samples. The study employs a unique research design where half of the raters base their assessments solely on L2/L3 speech (control group), while half have access to the learners' L1 speech (experimental group). The raters also provide comments on how the L1 speech samples affected their ratings of the L2 and L3 samples.
The research questions are:
1. To what extent are L2 English and L3 Swedish utterance fluency measures correlated with L2 and L3 fluency ratings?
2. How does information about learners' L1 speaking style influence the raters' L2 and L3 fluency assessments?
3. Which features and themes emerge in the raters' comments regarding the influence of the L1 speech samples on the L2 and L3 fluency assessments?
The analyses focus on the correlations between fluency ratings and utterance fluency measures based on the speech samples (articulation rate and frequency and duration of mid-clause silent pauses and corrections) and the differences in ratings between rater groups (experimental vs. control group) across the two target languages (English and Swedish). The raters' comments are also analyzed qualitatively. The assessment data collection will be completed in autumn 2022, and the results will be discussed in the presentation.
References:
Duran-Karaoz, Z. & Tavakoli, P. (2020). Predicting L2 fluency from L1 fluency behavior: The case of L1 Turkish and L2 English speakers. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(4), 671–695.
Peltonen P. (2018). Exploring connections between first and second language fluency: A mixed methods approach. The Modern Language Journal, 102(4), 676–692.
Peltonen, P. & Lintunen, P. (2022). Multilingual speakers' L1, L2, and L3 fluency across languages: A study of Finnish, Swedish, and English. Nordand, 17, 48–63.
Segalowitz, N. (2010). The cognitive bases of second language fluency. Routledge.
