ERIC Number: EJ1481987
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Sep
Pages: 37
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0023-8333
EISSN: EISSN-1467-9922
Available Date: 2025-07-09
Incorporating Co-Occurrence into the Operationalization of Speech Disfluency for Second Language Pronunciation and Oral Proficiency Assessment
Xun Yan1,2; Yulin Pan1
Language Learning, v75 suppl 1 p242-278 2025
Current L2 utterance fluency literature tends to operationalize disfluency as isolated, individual features. However, disfluency features often co-occur at one location or across multiple locations in one utterance. This study explores the co-occurrence of L2 disfluency features in a speech corpus from 71 L1 and L2 speakers of English across proficiency levels on an elicited imitation task and an oral listen-to-summarize task. We segmented each participant's speech into analysis of speech (AS) units (k = 2,704), extracted 2,972 individual disfluency chains based on 15 disfluency variables, and subjected them to principal components analysis and hierarchical-based K-means clustering analysis to identify disfluency co-occurrence patterns and speaker profiles across tasks. Results showed that different disfluency co-occurrences can be interpreted around various repair behaviors, and these repair behaviors also differ across tasks. Further analysis concerning the disfluency--proficiency relationship suggests that whereas some disfluency co-occurrences are meaningfully associated with proficiency, others might not be.
Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Language Fluency, Language Proficiency, Oral Language, English, English (Second Language), Chinese, Native Language, Language Tests, College Freshmen, Student Attitudes, Pronunciation
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Test of English as a Foreign Language
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; 2Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

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