What is oral fluency?

Zoe Handley, University of York

This paper presents a study designed to help better understand the relationship between second language proficiency and oral fluency, where fluency refers to fluidity of oral production.

34 Chinese learners of English studying for a master’s in language education in the UK participated in the study. Each learner completed three tasks: 1) a watch-then-tell task, 2) a picture naming task, and 3) a sentence construction task. A range of measures of oral fluency, including measures of speed and breakdown fluency were calculated based on their performance in the watch-then-tell task. Accuracy and completion times were recorded for the picture naming and sentence construction tasks.

The results suggest that lexical processing is associated with between-clause pausing – the slower learners performed the picture naming task, the longer they paused between-clauses – and grammar processing is associated with mid-clause pausing – the slower learners performed in the sentences construction task, the more often they paused mid-clause.

These results highlight the importance of carrying out fine-grained analyses of pause patterns which distinguish pauses according to location, mid-clause or between-clause, when assessing second language oral fluency.

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