Purpose: Previous studies have shown that individuals who stutter exhibit abnormal speech perception in addition to disfluent production as compared with their nonstuttering peers. This study investigated whether adult Chinese-speaking stutterers are still able to use knowledge of statistical regularities embedded in their native language to…

Previous research has shown that task repetition can positively affect L2 oral performance. However, few studies have explored the effects of task repetition on young EFL learners' production. Also, task repetition research has paid little attention to effects of "spacing" examined through longer time intervals between the two occasions…

Automatic Speech Scoring (ASS) has increasingly become a useful tool in oral proficiency testing for Second Language (L2) learners. However, limited studies investigate the alignment of ASS indices with the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF)--the three dimensions in evaluating L2 speakers' oral proficiency, and the subsequent impact indices…

orInverse relations, or "trade-off effects," are a common outcome of interlanguage development: a learner may increase performance in one linguistic domain while simultaneously decreasing performance in another. In this study, we investigate the relationships between one aspect of fluency (pause usage) and two aspects of syntactic…

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of metacognitive methods in college general English classes to improve students' communication skills and metacognitive awareness. The approach involved structuring learning activities where students adapted movie dialogues, practiced roles, collaborated with peers, and received feedback on…

Listener-based judgements of fluency play an important role in second language (L2) communication contexts and in L2 assessment. Accordingly, our meta-analysis examined the relationship between different aspects of utterance fluency and listener-based judgements of perceived fluency by analyzing primary studies reporting correlation coefficients…

This study investigated the effects of a reading assistant software on the fluency and accuracy of speech production among EFL university students, employing a one-group pretest-posttest design. The participants included 50 Thai undergraduate English majors in their first and second years. Data were analyzed using paired samples t-tests to measure…

Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interactions even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and…

Background/purpose: This research aimed to evaluate the impact of integrating the WSQ-based flipped learning method with cooperative learning on speaking performance among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Addressing the challenges EFL learners face in oral proficiency, the study sought to determine whether this innovative pedagogical…

This action research centered on features of oral fluency among Chilean higher education students, focusing on the 'describing picture strategy' innovation. Set in the context of the Advanced English II course, the study determines the effects of the strategy in boosting oral fluency. The intervention of this investigation was enhanced by…

This study explored the effectiveness of integrating peer assessment (PA) and non-scripted role-play (NSRP) activities in enhancing the oral performance of Thai EFL high school students. Conducted at a public secondary school in Bangkok, the research involved 31 Grade 12 students and utilized a mixed methods approach. Over nine weeks within the…

This study examined the effect of benchmarking and peer-assessment activities on second language (L2) French learners' self-assessments of accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency. The learners, who included 25 L2 French students enrolled in a 15-week university-level French course, recorded two oral presentations at the beginning and the end…

This longitudinal case study investigated the developmental trajectories of two participants enrolled in an ITA oral communication course at Purdue University. The course provides language support to the ITA population who play a crucial role in higher education programs in the U.S. (Gorsuch, 2016). Over four months (i.e., one semester), I…

Target language speaking competence is a skill both students and world language teachers desire to develop, yet it is often one of the weakest areas observed in secondary classrooms (Thompson & Mutton, 2022). To help improve student willingness to speak, educators should understand what intrinsically and extrinsically motivates learners. The…

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These…