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摘要：This study looks at the effect of developing L2 listening fluency through extensive listening to audio graded readers. A large bank of listening fluency development questions (2,064 items) was constructed based on ten Level 1 graded readers. Three groups of L2 students were engaged in one of three different input modes while studying ten graded readers over a 13-week period: reading only, reading while listening, and listening only. All participants were given one pre-test (60 items) before the intervention and one post-test consisting of three texts (180 items) after the intervention. All the passages were delivered at the same speech rate, and the participants were allowed to listen only once. The post-test results demonstrate that the reading plus listening group produced the most consistent and significant outcome compared with the reading-only and listening-only groups. The results have some implications for developing L2 listening fluency. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This study examined metalinguistic awareness in children who were becoming bilingual in an immersion education program. The purpose was to determine at what point in emerging bilingualism the previously reported metalinguistic advantages appear and what types of metalinguistic tasks reveal these developmental differences. Participants were 124 children in second and fifth grades who were enrolled in either a French immersion or a regular English program. All children were from monolingual English-speaking homes and attended local public schools in middle socioeconomic neighborhoods. Measures included morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, and verbal fluency, with all testing in English. These tasks differed in their need for executive control, a cognitive ability that is enhanced in bilingual children. Overall, the metalinguistic advantages reported in earlier research emerged gradually, with advantages for tasks requiring more executive control (grammaticality judgment) appearing later and some tasks improving but not exceeding performance of monolinguals (verbal fluency) even by fifth grade. These findings demonstrate the gradual emergence of changes in metalinguistic concepts associated with bilingualism over a period of about 5 years. Performance on English-language proficiency tasks was maintained by French immersion children throughout in spite of schooling being conducted in French. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This article is part of a longitudinal study of American college students studying Mandarin in China. Its main data are drawn from monthly speaking events (four sessions with each student) conducted in Chinese with each of 29 participants in a study-abroad program in China. The study yielded these results: (a) Students made significant progress in their fluency development, especially during the first month; (b) speaking Chinese both inside and outside of class helped fluency; (c) students who consistently spoke Chinese in class and out of class made more progress than those who did not; and (d) time on task, the amount of time that students spent using Chinese, was the most important factor in determining fluency development. The quantitative analysis that is the focus of this article is supplemented by qualitative data from individual students, reflecting the position that only a combination of quantitative and qualitative data can reveal a complete picture of the nature of language acquisition during study abroad. The article concludes with implications for the design and conduct of programs in China.

摘要：We report a classroom experiment directed at increasing lexical fluency in writing. Participants were 107 Dutch students in bilingual (EFL) education (Grades 10 and 11). According to current theories of writing such fluency allows writers to devote more attention to higher order aspects of text production, such as idea generation, selection and organization, and revision of content. Two contrasting assumptions are studied: the inhibition assumption that effortful word production prevents writers from attending to higher order aspects and the compensation assumption that writers compensate for effortful word production processes by sequential processing strategies. Results show that a group trained in writingandfluency in the deployment of useful words for writing in specific tasks outperformed a group receiving the same writing lessons butwithoutfluency training both in fluency of trained words and in frequency of use of the target words in writing. However, the lexical fluency group did not produce foreign language texts of better quality than the group that received no fluency training. Both groups, however, outperformed a baseline control group that had not received writing lessons. The results are interpreted as support for the compensation assumption.

摘要：This quasi-experimental study is aimed at (a) teaching learners how to provide corrective feedback (CF) during peer interaction and (b) assessing the effects of peer interaction and CF on second language (L2) development. Four university-level English classes in Japan participated (N = 167), each assigned to one of four treatment conditions. Of the two CF groups, one was taught to provide prompts and the other to provide recasts. A third group participated in only peer-interaction activities, and a fourth served as the control group. After one semester of intervention, the two CF groups improved in both overall accuracy and fluency, measured as unpruned and pruned speech rates, whereas the peer-interaction-only group outperformed the control group only on fluency measures. This study draws on monitoring in speech-production theory and the declarative-procedural model of skill-acquisition theory to interpret these results, thus contributing a new theoretical approach to CF research in the context of peer interaction in which learners can be providers of CF. It is concluded that whereas peer interaction offered opportunities for repeated production practice, facilitating proceduralization, CF sharpened learners' ability to monitor both their own language production and that of their interlocutors. Adapted from the source document

摘要：Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners' perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors' communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales -- for example, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) -- shortcomings of existing scales (e.g., vague descriptors) reflect limited empirical evidence as to which linguistic aspects influence listeners' judgments of L2 comprehensibility at different ability levels. To address this gap, a mixed-methods approach was used in the present study to gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects underlying listeners' L2 comprehensibility ratings. First, speech samples of 40 native French learners of English were analyzed using 19 quantitative speech measures, including segmental, suprasegmental, fluency, lexical, grammatical, and discourse-level variables. These measures were then correlated with 60 native English listeners' scalar judgments of the speakers' comprehensibility. Next, three English as a second language (ESL) teachers provided introspective reports on the linguistic aspects of speech that they attended to when judging L2 comprehensibility. Following data triangulation, five speech measures were identified that clearly distinguished between L2 learners at different comprehensibility levels. Lexical richness and fluency measures differentiated between low-level learners; grammatical and discourse-level measures differentiated between high-level learners; and word stress errors discriminated between learners of all levels. Adapted from the source document

摘要：There are many reasons to believe that oral participation in the target language (TL) is beneficial for classroom language learners. In addition to the prominence current second language acquisition (SLA) theory gives to processes that assume learner production of the TL (e.g. negotiation of meaning), teachers often view oral participation as a measure of learner involvement. Thus, it is often assumed that learners who participate often are likely to make greater proficiency gains. This correlational study examined this assumption by investigating the relationship between learners' oral participation in classes for English as a foreign language (EFL) at a Japanese university and their gains in TL proficiency. Results indicated that while the quality of learners' participation (accuracy, complexity, and fluency) was positively related to gains in TL ability, quantity of participation was not. While not indicative of a cause-effect relationship, the results suggest that teachers might wish to consider encouraging quality of participation as well as quantity.

摘要：The purpose of this article is to offer contextual linguistic explanations for morphosyntactic deviances (MSDs) in high-level second language (L2) French (30 nonnative speakers vs. 10 native speakers). It is hypothesized that the distribution of formulaic sequences (FSs) and the complexity of information structure will influence the occurrence of MSDs. The study reports that MSDs rarely occur within FSs, and if they do, they occur within sequences containing open slots for creative rule application. The rhematic part of the utterance attracts more MSDs due to the fact that this part is more syntactically complex than the preamble (the thematic part). An additional explanation is the mean length of the rhematic part, which is longer than the preamble and implies a higher processing load. A final explanation of MSD occurrence in the rheme is linked to the distribution of FSs in the information structure. The results are discussed in relation to the ongoing debate on the constructs of complexity, accuracy, and fluency -- a promising area of study. Adapted from the source document

摘要：The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between components of aptitude and the fluency, lexical variety, syntactic complexity, and accuracy of performance in two types of written and spoken narrative tasks. We also addressed the question of how narrative performance varies in tasks of different cognitive complexity in the written and spoken modes. Our findings indicate a complex interaction between aptitude components and task performance under different conditions. The components of aptitude that seemed to be most strongly related to the complexity and accuracy of production were inductive ability and grammatical sensitivity. The results also show that in writing the participants used more varied vocabulary than in speech, but their performance was similar in terms of syntactic complexity. Adapted from the source document

摘要：Drawing on current theories in personality, second-language (L2) oral ability, and psychometrics, this study investigates the extent to which self-consciousness and assertiveness are explanatory variables of L2 oral ability. Three hundred sixty first-year Japanese university students who were studying English as a foreign language participated in the study. Personality was measured with the Japanese version of the NEO-PI-R (Shimonaka, Nakazato, Gondo, & Takayama, 2002), and L2 oral ability was assessed with an institutionalized group oral discussion test in which performances were judged for pronunciation, fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and communication skills. An analysis of covariance structures technique indicated that assertiveness is a significant explanatory variable of L2 oral ability and no effect was found for self-consciousness. Communication skills and fluency were slightly better explained by assertiveness than the other subconstructs of oral ability.

摘要：The present study investigates the role of speech repetition in oral fluency development. Twenty-four students enrolled in English-as-a-second-language classes performed three training sessions in which they recorded three speeches, of 4, 3, and 2 min, respectively. Some students spoke about the same topic three times, whereas others spoke about three different topics. It was found that fluency improved for both groups during training but was maintained on post-tests only by the students who repeated their speeches. These students had used more words repeatedly across speeches, most of which were not specifically related to the topic. It is argued that proceduralization of linguistic knowledge represented a change in underlying cognitive mechanisms, resulting in improvements in observable fluency.

摘要：We report a classroom experiment directed at increasing lexical fluency in writing. Participants were 107 Dutch students in bilingual (EFL) education (Grades 10 and 11). According to current theories of writing such fluency allows writers to devote more attention to higher order aspects of text production, such as idea generation, selection and organization, and revision of content. Two contrasting assumptions are studied: the inhibition assumption that effortful word production prevents writers from attending to higher order aspects and the compensation assumption that writers compensate for effortful word production processes by sequential processing strategies. Results show that a group trained in writing and fluency in the deployment of useful words for writing in specific tasks outperformed a group receiving the same writing lessons but without fluency training both in fluency of trained words and in frequency of use of the target words in writing. However, the lexical fluency group did not produce foreign language texts of better quality than the group that received no fluency training. Both groups, however, outperformed a baseline control group that had not received writing lessons. The results are interpreted as support for the compensation assumption. Adapted from the source document

摘要：This article reports on three research studies, all of which concern second language task performance. The first focuses on planning, and compares on-line and strategic planning as well as task repetition. The second study examines the role of familiarity on task performance, and compares this with conventional strategic planning. The third study examines the effect on task performance of different types of post-task transcription. The three studies are also examined in relation to one another for the broader generalizations that they permit. These suggest that repetition can be stronger in its effects than on-line or strategic planning, but that planning is more potent in its effects than simply familiarity with the material being spoken about. In addition, what is termed supported on-line planning and post-task transcription are associated with less error in performance. The three studies are discussed in terms of the wider second language performance processes of complexifying, rehearsing and monitoring. These processes are linked to the Levelt model of speaking, and applied to the need to analyse tasks in a manner consistent with pedagogic goals.

摘要：This article reports on a study that was primarily aimed at investigating the effects of simultaneous use of careful online planning and task repetition on accuracy, complexity, and fluency in the oral production of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The effects of four planning and task repetition conditions (i.e. careful online planning without task repetition, pressured online planning with task repetition, careful online planning with task repetition, and pressured online planning without task repetition) on learners' accuracy, complexity, and fluency in producing English language were investigated. Iranian intermediate-level EFL learners (n = 60) were randomly selected and assigned to the four task conditions. The results obtained from one-way ANOVAs revealed that the opportunity to engage simultaneously in careful online planning and task repetition enhances accuracy, complexity, and fluency significantly. The obtained results also have some implications for teachers and practitioners in EFL context. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

摘要：This study examines the second language (L2) written and oral performance of three groups of Spanish-speaking university students after being exposed to English in different contexts. One group of learners was spending some time abroad (Erasmus students in the UK), and two groups were following classroom instruction in two different types of intensive courses in Spain: "intensive" and "semi-intensive". The learners' L2 written and oral production were analyzed at different time points through different measures of fluency, syntactic and lexical complexity, and accuracy. The main objective of this study was to compare the performance of the students abroad with each of the two intensive programmes. According to the results of the statistical analyses, after an equivalent period of exposure to the L2 in the two contexts, the students abroad outperformed the learners in the "at home semi-intensive" programme in the post-test in some of the variables under study, namely fluency and lexical complexity. Nevertheless, the students' written and oral performance after an intensive course at home and after the equivalent time abroad was similar. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]