The Influence of working memory on L2 oral fluency: an exploratory study

Màster de Lingüística Aplicada i Adquisició de Llengües en Contextos Multilingües, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2012, Supervisor: Dr. Roger GilabertThe goal of this exploratory study is to investigate the effect of working memory capacity on L2 oral fluency in 79 learners of English as a foreign language. Three tasks were used as measures of working memory (the reading span task, letter span task and an attention-switching task). Twelve measures of fluency were used spanning across speed, breakdown and repair fluency. Positive correlations were found with measures of repair fluency, specifically morphosyntactic, differency, and other repairs whereas negative correlations were found for lexical repairs. When participants were divided into groups based on proficiency, potential relationships were found between working memory and speed/breakdown fluency suggesting the possible existence of proficiency thresholds affecting the relationship between working memory and fluency. The results are discussed in light of previous research and De Bot’s (1992) model of L2 speech production

Formulaic Sequences as Fluency Devices in the Oral Production of Native Speakers of Polish

In this paper we attempt to determine the nature and strength of the relationship between the use of formulaic sequences and productive fluency of native speakers of Polish. In particular, we seek to validate the claim that speech characterized by a higher incidence of formulaic sequences is produced more rapidly and with fewer hesitation phenomena. The analysis is based on monologic speeches delivered by 45 speakers of L1 Polish. The data include both the recordings and their transcriptions annotated for a number of objective fluency measures. In the first part of the study the total of formulaic sequences is established for each sample. This is followed by determining a set of temporal measures of the speakers’ output (speech rate, articulation rate, mean length of runs, mean length of pauses, phonation time ratio). The study provides some preliminary evidence of the fluency-enhancing role of formulaic language. Our results show that the use of formulaic sequences is positively and significantly correlated with speech rate, mean length of runs and phonation time ratio. This suggests that a higher concentration of formulaic material in output is associated with faster speed of speech, longer stretches of speech between pauses and an increased amount of time filled with speech

Pragmatic functions of lengthenings and filled pauses in the adult-directed speech of Hungarian children

Two most common disfluencies of spontaneous speech, vowel lengthenings (VLE) and non-lexicalized filled pauses (NLFP) were investigated in the adult-directed speech of eight Hungarian children. Though VLE and NLFP might seem to be similar vocalizations, recent investigations have shown that their occurrences might differ remarkably in child speech and may al-so change as a function of age. Based on these findings, in the present study the functional analysis of VLEs and NLFPs was performed. It was hypothesized that in child speech the two phenomena have roles not only in speech planning, but also in discourse management, and that they show functional distribution. The analysis provided evidence that VLE is more common than NLFP. VLE often tends to mark discourse events and may play a role in turn-final floor-holding strategies, while NLFP is mostly connected to speech planning, and occasionally, it may also participate in turn-taking gestures, as well

To What Extent is Collocation Knowledge Associated with Oral Proficiency? A Corpus-Based Approach to Word Association

This study examined the relationship between second language (L2) learners’ collocation knowledge and oral proficiency. A new approach to measuring collocation was adopted by eliciting responses through a word association task and using corpus-based measures (absolute frequency count, t-score, MI score) to analyze the degree to which stimulus words and responses were collocated. Oral proficiency was measured using human judgements and objective measures of fluency (articulation rate, silent pause ratio, filled pause ratio) and lexical richness (diversity, frequency, range). Forty Japanese university students completed a word association task and a spontaneous speaking task (picture narrative). Results indicated that speakers who used more low-frequency collocations in the word association task (i.e., lower collocation frequency scores) spoke faster with fewer silent pauses and were perceived to be more fluent. Speakers who provided more strongly associated collocations (as measured by MI) used more sophisticated lexical items and were perceived to be lexically proficient. Collocation knowledge remained as a unique predictor after the influence of learners’ vocabulary size (i.e., knowledge of single-word items) was considered. These findings support the key role that collocation plays in oral proficiency and provide important insights into understanding L2 speech development from the perspective of phraseological competence

Beyond the clinic? Eluding a medical diagnosis of anorexia through narrative

The persistence and recurrence of anorexia nervosa poses a clinical challenge, and provides support for critiques of oppressive and injurious facets of society inscribed on women’s bodies. This essay illustrates how a phenomenological, linguistic anthropological approach fruitfully traverses clinical and cultural perspectives by directing attention beyond the embodied experience of patients diagnosed with anorexia nervosa to those who are not clinically diagnosed. Extending a model of illness and recovery as entailing sufferers’ emplotting of past, present, and imagined future selves, I argue that women’s accounts of their experiences do not simply reflect lived reality, but actually propel health-relevant states of being by enlivening and creating these realities in the process of their telling. In indexical interaction with public and clinical discourses, narratives’ grammar, lexicon, and plot structures modify subjects’ experiences and interpretations of the events and feelings recounted. This article builds on the insight that linear narratives of “full recovery” that adopt a clinical and feminist voice can help tellers stay recovered, whereas for those “struggling to recover,” a genre of contingent, uncertain, sideshadowing narratives alternatively renders recovery an elusive and ambivalently desired object. This essay then identifies a third narrative genre, eluding a diagnosis, which combines elements of the first two genres to paradoxically keep its teller simultaneously sheltered from, and invisible to the well-meaning clutches of medical care, leaving her suffering, yet free, to starve. This focus on narrative genres illustrates the utility of linguistic analyses for discerning and interpreting distress in subclinical populations.First author draf

Are language production problems apparent in adults who no longer meet diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?

In this study, we examined sentence production in a sample of adults (N = 21) who had had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as children, but as adults no longer met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria (APA, 2000). This “remitted” group was assessed on a sentence production task. On each trial, participants saw two objects and a verb. Their task was to construct a sentence using the objects as arguments of the verb. Results showed more ungrammatical and disfluent utterances with one particular type of verb (i.e., participle). In a second set of analyses, we compared the remitted group to both control participants and a “persistent” group, who had ADHD as children and as adults. Results showed that remitters were more likely to produce ungrammatical utterances and to make repair disfluencies compared to controls, and they patterned more similarly to ADHD participants. Conclusions focus on language output in remitted ADHD, and the role of executive functions in language production

Parenthetical 'I say (you)' in Late Medieval Greek vernacular: a message structuring discourse marker rather than a message conveying verb

In this paper, I argue that the first-person singular of the "ordinary" verb lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde ('I say') in the thirteenth-to fourteenth-century political verse narratives Chronicle of Morea and War of Troy does not always carry its "normal", representational content ('I inform/assure [you]'). Frequently, lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde structures the discourse rather than conveying conceptual meaning and, thus, has procedural meaning. In this respect, the verb can be compared to modern discourse markers (i.e., semantically reduced items which abound in spoken language). An important-yet not decisive-criterion to distinguish the conceptual from the procedural use is the position of lambda epsilon gamma omega/lambda alpha lambda(omega) over tilde: all "DM-like" examples are parenthetical. As for their precise pragmatic function, these forms are used, in particular, to signal a clarification towards the listener ("I mean") or, more generally, to grab the attention of the audience. Applied to the modern binary distinction between interpersonal and textual discourse markers, they thus belong to the former category. Finally, I tentatively relate the observation that the procedural parenthetical examples show a marked preference for pre-caesural position to the concept of "filled pauses", which makes sense given the adopted oral style of the Late Medieval Greek political verse narratives

The presence, nature and role of formulaic sequences in English advanced learners of French : a longitudinal study

PhD ThesisThe present study is a longitudinal investigation of the presence, nature, and role of formulaic sequences (FS) in advanced English learners of French. The learners investigated are in their second year of an undergraduate degree in French at the onset of the study, and are tested before and after a seven-month stay in France. FS are defined psycholinguistically as multiword units which present a processing advantage for a given speaker, either because they are stored whole in his/her mental lexicon (Wray 2002) or because they are highly automatised. The construct of FS is particularly relevant to investigate key linguistic issues such as the dynamism of linguistic representations, their idiosyncratic nature as well as the relationship between the lexicon and grammar. FS have been shown to be frequent in the oral productions of native speakers. They also play an important role in first language acquisition as well as in the initial stages of instructed second language (L2) acquisition. However, very little is known about their presence and role in advanced L2 learners, as most studies dealing with them have not adopted a psycholinguistic approach and have focused on L2 learners’ knowledge and use of idioms and idiomatic expressions. Conversely, this study seeks to evaluate and characterise the presence of psycholinguistically-defined FS in advanced learners as well as examine their longitudinal development in relation to the development of the learners’ fluency and lexical diversity. It seeks to determine whether FS use can be said to play a role in the development of fluency and lexical diversity and if it does, describe the underlying mechanisms that account for this role. Data from five learners performing five oral tasks (an interview, a story retell and 3 discussion tasks), repeated before and after their stay in France, was elicited and transcribed. FS were identified through the hierarchical application of a range of criteria aiming to capture the holistic nature of the sequences. The necessary criterion used for identification was fluent pronunciation of the sequence, and additional criteria were applied such as irregularity, holistic mapping of form to meaning or holistic status of the sequence in the input. Fluency was operationalised through 4 measures (phonation-time ratio, speaking rate, mean length of runs and articulation rate) and lexical diversity was measured using D. The results show that psycholinguistically-defined FS represent about 27% of the language of advanced learners of French. The typology of the identified sequences shows that they are mostly grammatically regular but that despite the advanced level of the participants, some present non-nativelike characteristics. Individual differences in the learners’ repertoires of FS as well as task effects are also found. Between time 1 and time 2, across the group of 5 subjects, there is a general and statistically significant increase in FS use, fluency and lexical diversity. Significant correlations are found between FS use, fluency and lexical diversity. The qualitative analysis suggests that FS use plays a role in increasing fluency by allowing longer speech runs, contributing to the reduction of pausing time as well as the speeding up of the articulation rate. At the internal level of processing mechanisms, the results suggest that FS play a facilitating role not only in the formulation stage of speech production but also in the conceptualisation and articulation stages. Significant correlations are also found between FS use and lexical diversity, which suggests that FS, by lightening the processing burden and freeing some attentional resources, might facilitate the acquisition of new vocabulary. The analysis of the development of the learners across all variables shows a single developmental path with similar processes of automatisation but with different rates of acquisition, as the learners vary in how efficient they are at proceduralising their language. Because of this, it is suggested that the year abroad is more likely to be beneficial for a given subject if their language has already reached a certain level of automatisation pre-time abroad.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Refining the Methodology for Investigating the Relationship Between Fluency and the Use of Formulaic Language in Learner Speech

This study is a cross-sectional analysis of the relationship between productive fluency and the use of formulaic sequences in the speech of highly proficient L2 learners. Two samples of learner speech were randomly drawn and analysed. Formulaic sequences were identified on the basis of two distinct procedures: a frequency-based, distributional approach which returned a set of recurrent sequences (n-grams) and an intuition and criterion-based, linguistic procedure which returned a set of phrasemes. Formulaic material was then removed from the data. Breakdown and speed fluency measures were obtained for the following types of speech: baseline (pre-removal), formulaic, non-formulaic (post-removal). The results show significant differences between baseline and post-removal fluency scores for both learners. Also, formulaic speech is produced more fluently than non-formulaic speech. However, the comparison of the fluency scores of n-grams and phrasemes returned inconsistent results with significant differences reported only for one of the samples