The development of L2 utterance fluency has been extensively researched, whereas that of cognitive fluency has rarely been examined. This study investigated the longitudinal development of L2 utterance and cognitive fluency and their relationship. Thirty-one Chinese learners of English completed speaking tasks and a set of tasks for cognitive…

The article reports on the findings of a study investigating the relationship between first language (L1) and second language (L2) fluency behavior. Drawing on data collected from Turkish learners of English, the study also addresses the question of whether proficiency level mediates the relationship, if any. The data were coded for a range of…

The current study examined the extent to which cognitive fluency (CF) contributes to utterance fluency (UF) at the level of constructs. A total of 128 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed four speaking tasks--argumentative task, picture narrative task, reading-to-speaking task, and reading-while-listening-to-speaking task--and a battery…

This study examined the linguistic dimensions of comprehensibility and perceived fluency in the context of L2 argumentative speech elicited from 40 Japanese-speaking learners of English. Their speaking performance was judged by 10 inexperienced native speakers of English for comprehensibility and perceived fluency, and was also objectively…

This study examined the role of visual cues (facial expressions and hand gestures) in second language (L2) speech assessment. University students (N = 60) at English-medium universities assessed 2-minute video clips of 20 L2 English speakers (10 Chinese and 10 Spanish speakers) narrating a personal story. They rated the speakers'…

This study investigated the underlying structure of a set of eight cognitive tests from the two most recent language aptitude test batteries: the LLAMA (Meara, 2005) and the Hi-LAB (Linck et al., 2013) to see whether they had any underlying constructs in common. The study also examined whether any of the observed constructs could predict L2…

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters' assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were…