Ebian Yi wedding songs are essential to the Yi ethnic group's musical and cultural heritage, and they are traditionally performed during wedding ceremonies in Ebian Yi Autonomous County, Sichuan Province, China. This study examines the role of Ebian Yi wedding songs in promoting Chinese folk music literacy and the obstacles affecting their…

The importance of vocabulary when speaking is not only demonstrated in models of second language speech production and speaking proficiency but also reflected in rating criteria and assessment scales. The present study examined and compared micro-level lexical information in a speaking task from two complementary stakeholders' perspectives…

Second language (L2) utterance fluency is crucial for speaking proficiency assessment. The measurement of L2 utterance fluency relies heavily on silent pause identification. However, empirical studies establishing specific silent pause thresholds for L2 monologic speaking are scarce, and even fewer exist for L2 dialogic speaking. This study thus…

Foreign language (L2) learners' speaking proficiency is often quantified using two dimensions: intuitive human ratings and analytical, linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) indices. While previous research and assessment practices have predominantly focused on either the subjective approach to L2 speaking or the objective one, it is…

This study examined the relationship between complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), using longitudinal data. Conducted from the perspective of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), this research adopted four CAF general measures to track the development of five Chinese undergraduates' English speech over a 15-week period. LOWESS graphs supported…

Background: It is well evident that individuals' levels of print exposure are significantly correlated with their reading ability across languages, and an author recognition test is commonly used to measure print exposure objectively. For the first time, the current work developed and validated a Simplified Chinese Author Recognition Test (SCART)…

This paper explores what the measures of utterance fluency typically employed in Automatic Speech Evaluation (ASE), i.e. automated speaking assessments, tell us about oral proficiency. 60 Chinese learners of English completed the second part of the speaking section of IELTS and six tasks designed to measure the linguistic knowledge and processing…

This longitudinal study examines the effects of a pre-study abroad (SA) pedagogic intervention and subsequent SA experience on second language (L2) Mandarin fluency. It explores two temporal aspects of oral fluency--planning time and speech rate--along with one performance measure, duration of response. Additionally, L2 contact data were included…

The present study investigated the potential of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) for language learning by manipulating cognitive task complexity based on related models and hypotheses. English essays written by 59 Chinese postgraduate EFL students from different subject areas were analysed with reference to writing complexity,…

The current study investigates whether vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, and vocabulary fluency contribute differentially to L2 reading and listening comprehension. One hundred and thirty-eight EFL learners first took three vocabulary knowledge tests that measured vocabulary fluency, vocabulary breadth, and vocabulary depth. Subsequently, they…

Background: Previous studies on language production in normal ageing have primarily focused on distinct dimensions of older adults' spoken language performance, such as fluency and complexity. However, little attention has been paid to the complex, interconnected relations between these dimensions. Additionally, older adults have been treated as a…

This article examines cross-ethnic friendships among ethnic minority and Han majority students at a Chinese university. This university is characterized by its institutional mission to meet the needs of ethnic minority students and its commitment to serving as a minority-majority university. However, our study demonstrates that high levels of…

This study reports on anxiety, enjoyment, and breakdown fluency of L2 English learners under the monologue and dialogue conditions using an idiodynamic approach. Eight Mandarin-speaking undergraduates from a top university in China voluntarily participated in the study, with half completing in a monologue condition and the other half in a dialogue…

This longitudinal study made the first attempt to employ Latent Growth Curve Modeling to analyze the development of L2 speaking accuracy and fluency through online scaffolding as well as the dynamic relationship between L2 speaking performance and self-efficacy. From the perspective of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory, it tracked the development of…

Previous studies have explored the roles of metacognitive instruction and collaborative writing, separately, in English writing. Little attention has been paid to students' writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). The present study aims to bridge this gap through investigating integrated writing performances based on the linguistic…