L2 Oral Fluency: The Relative Contributions of Phonological Processing Ability and Learning Experience

• Main Authors: Jhih-Kai Yang, 楊智凱
• Other Authors: Chieh-Fang Hu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18166556431656818235

碩士 === 臺北市立教育大學 === 英語教學系碩士班 === 101 === Abstract This study investigated the relative contributions of experiential and phonological processing factors to oral fluency performance among 98 adult EFL learners in Taiwan and the mediating role of language proficiency in influencing the relative contributions of the two factors. The experiential factor was assessed by a structured interview with questions about length of language learning, learning contact, and learning context. The phonological processing factors included phonological working memory and phonological retrieval. Oral fluency performance indexed by temporal and hesitation phenomena was gauged by a picture narrative task, in which the participants were asked to tell a story twice, first without linguistic prompts and second after hearing a model storytelling with linguistic prompts. The results showed that the relationships between pause phenomena and the principal factors were unclear. The experiential factor contributed to predicting oral fluency performance independently of the phonological processing factors. One of the phonological processing factors, phonological working memory, predicted participants’ speech rate independently of the experiential factor only in prompted but not in unprompted storytelling, underscoring the importance of phonological working memory capacity in utilizing available input information for the purpose of immediate production. In terms of the mediating role of proficiency in the relationship between oral fluency and the two factors, the experiential factor was a unique predictor of speech rate independently of phonological processing among low- and high-proficiency learners. While neither of the phonological processing factors was related to speech rate among low-proficiency learners, phonological retrieval uniquely contributed to speech rate in unprompted storytelling among high-proficiency learners. The results suggest that the experiential factor plays a major role in determining oral fluency in adult EFL learners who have a long history of English learning. Phonological processing can be an additional limiting factor depending on the demands of the task and the proficiency level of the learners.