1 / 43

Understanding Oral Fluency in ESL Teaching

Explore the development of oral fluency in ESL through a detailed discussion on broad vs. narrow definitions, determinants, and models of fluency, with insights into testing and developing fluency in classroom settings.

efrainp
Download Presentation

Understanding Oral Fluency in ESL Teaching

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The study of oral fluency development in ESL A colloquium on teaching and learning world languages Queens College, March 27, 2008 Nel de Jong

  2. What is fluency? • What does it mean to say “He’s fluent in French”? • What does it mean when a teacher grades a student on accuracy and fluency? • Broad vs. narrow definition (Lennon, 1990) • Broad: general oral proficiency • Narrow: speed and smoothness of oral delivery • Fluency is a characteristic of the speaker, or of his/her speech (product)

  3. Determinants of fluency • The fluency of the product is determined by the speaker • His/her knowledge and processing • Characteristics, like extraversion • It’s also determined by the task: • Is there time for planning? • How complex is the task? • How familiar is the topic? Speaker Task Product Adapted from Tavakoli & Skehan (2005)

  4. Model of the speaker • What does a speaker do? • Think of what to say • Find the right words • Put the words into a sentence • Use grammar rules for word order, agreement, tense marking • Pronounce the words and sentences

  5. Model of the speaker Conceptualizer Topic familiarity and planning affect the conceptualizer Formulator Grammatical encoding Lexicon (lemmas) A slowdown or breakdown in one of the components will affect fluency Phonological encoding Topic familiarity affects the lexicon Articulator Levelt (1989)

  6. Speech samples • More fluent Less fluent

  7. Speaker A I love doing sport and uh but I don't like to watch them in on tv so: I think sports uh can keep your mind active and um I like some kind of ah sports like running and yoga and swimming an:d &form [: for] instance running uh I run I try to run everyday but I can't sometimes I go: running with my roommate sometimes to the park which is close to our apartment and uh after that we do some yoga for two hour:s

  8. Speaker B • yes um I like sport uh because it's very good and very entertaining and it help a lot uh without exercise our body our physical uh physic so uh my favorite sport is soccer &com uh we call it football but my country not over here American call it soccer an:d why I like soccer is just because it's the most popular uh sport in my country and even in the world a:lso xxx the most uh popular sport in the world an:d I do play &ad I play I play soccer and I like to watch it too I used to play back to my country when I &wa when uh when I when I was there an:d uh uh

  9. Speech samples • More fluent Less fluent Speaker B Speaker A

  10. Speaker A (2) • everyone should have a way: to do some exercises and exercises uh keeps your mind active for instance I li:ke to do running and yo:ga and swimming I love to ru:n every day but sometim:es I can't so I try to run twice a week or more than that uh it is a good idea: to have someone that encourages you to do: something like my roommate my roommate always encourages me to to run or to: to do the yoga with him

  11. Speech samples • More fluent Less fluent Speaker B Speaker A Speaker A (2) What happened to Speaker A?

  12. Repetition • Speaker A spoke about the same topic three times • The third time: • Messages were already created (conceptualizer) • Vocabulary was already activated (lexicon) • Some grammar was activated (e.g., past tense forms; formulator) • The processes went more smoothly

  13. Benefit of repetition Conceptualizer Formulator In a repeated speech, some knowledge is already activated, and therefore easier to access Grammatical encoding Lexicon (lemmas) Phonological encoding Articulator

  14. How to measure fluencyof the speech product • There are many different ways in which fluency has been measured: • Articulation rate (words/syllables per minute) • Length, number, position of pauses • Length of fluent runs (number of words/syllables between pauses) • Phonation/time ratio (% of time filled with speech) • Number of hesitations (I like to to to run) • And more…

  15. How to measure fluencyof the speaker • There are two types of knowledge • Declarative (knowing that…) • Flexible, but slow • Procedural (knowing how to…) • Less flexible, but fast • When it comes to oral fluency, we’re interested in procedural knowledge • It’s fast and doesn’t take up a lot of cognitive resources • Declarative knowledge can be proceduralized

  16. Testing proceduralization • Proceduralization leads to higher fluency, because students can more easily construct longer and more complex sentences(Towell, Hawkins & Bazergui, 1996). This can be measured as: • Mean Length of Fluent Run: increase • Mean Length of Pause: stable or decrease • Phonation/Time Ratio: stable or increase • Proceduralization applies to the lexicon and the grammatical encoder (in the formulator)

  17. How to develop fluency in the classroom • 4/3/2 Procedure • Talk about a topic for 4 minutes • Retell in 3 minutes • Retell in 2 minutes • Although students cannot repeat verbatim, they can benefit from recently having generated semantic content, and having selected vocabulary and syntactic constructions (Maurice, 1983; Nation, 1989) • Computerized version: individual, no pair work

  18. Research Questions • Does repetition of a short speech increase fluency? • Repetition (1 topic) vs. No Repetition (3 topics) • If so: • What is affected? • Proceduralization • Speed (articulation rate) • Is it a long-term effect?

  19. Participants • Level 4: high intermediate • Randomly assigned • 19 students • 19-37 yrs (mean 25 yrs) • L1s: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, other

  20. Conditions • Two conditions • Repetition: 1 topic • No Repetition: 3 different topics

  21. Procedure • One practice session • Three training sessions of 4/3/2 technique • Tests: Two-minute Recorded Speaking Activities (RSAs) about unrelated topics • Pretest: 3-4 days before training • Immediate posttest: week after training • Delayed posttest: 3.5 weeks after training

  22. Preparation: Take notes

  23. Speaking

  24. Results: pre- and posttests Proceduralization Pause = silent or filled with non-verbal fillers (e.g., uh, um)

  25. Results: pre- and posttests Proceduralization Pause = silent or filled with non-verbal fillers (e.g., uh, um)

  26. Summary of pre- and posttests results • Some evidence for proceduralization in Repetition condition • Markers of fluency • shorter pauses • more speech • The effect was found on the posttest • One week AFTER training

  27. Results: 4/3/2 training Improvement on all measures But no effect of condition Pause = silent or filled with non-verbal fillers (e.g., uh, um)

  28. Hesitations • How about hesitations? • Hesitations without correction: • He encourages me to to run • There's a park by my by my apartment • Hesitations with correction (monitoring): • I don’t like to watch sports in on TV • When he see me when he sees me

  29. Results: 4/3/2 trainingHesitations Hesitations w/o correction: No effect of repetition Hesitations with correction: No effect of repetition

  30. Lexical variety (MSTTR) • How about lexical variety? • Number of different words used • Compare • I like pets. Cats are nice. I like cats. • 6 types / 9 tokens = .67 • I like pets, especially cats because they are nice • 9 types / 9 tokens = 1.00 • The Mean Segmental Type/Token Ratio (MSTTR) corrects for speech length • MSTTR: Mean Type/Token ratio of segments of 40 words

  31. Results: 4/3/2 trainingLexical variety (MSTTR) Type/token ratio increases for both groups

  32. Future studies • What linguistic knowledge is involved? (Spring 2008) • Vocabulary: breadth and depth • Morphosyntactic and syntactic structures: accurate use and complexity of constructions • Does pre-training these knowledge components accelerate fluency development? (Fall 2008) • How does time pressure influence fluency development in the 4/3/2 task? (Spring 2008)

  33. Benefits of 4/3/2 in language lab • For students: • Improvement in fluency • More speaking time per student • For teachers, potentially: • Streamlining the process of collecting speech samples and giving feedback • For researchers: • Streamlining data collection

  34. Conclusion • The 4/3/2 task seems to work because of repetition • Repetition seems to result in proceduralization of knowledge (vocabulary or grammar) • Leading to an increase in fluency • The effect is retained for at least a month

  35. Many thanks to: • Prof. C.A. Perfetti, Dr. L.K. Halderman • Research assistants: Colleen Davy, Rhonda McClain, Jessica Hogan • The students and teachers at the ELI of the University of Pittsburgh • Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center Nel de Jong, cornelia.dejong@qc.cuny.edu This work was supported by the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation award number SBE-0354420.

  36. Extra slides …

  37. RSA Topics Fall 2006 • Pretest: How do you feel about pets? • Posttest: Talk about a person who was very important to you in the past. • Delayed posttest: What is the biggest problem your country is facing today?

  38. Open questions Further analyses • Do higher-proficiency students benefit more or less from the 4/3/2 training than lower-proficiency students? • Low intermediate vs. high intermediate • How does 4/3/2 affect accuracy and complexity? • Target-like use and type–token ratio

  39. Accuracy and complexity measures • Target-like use • Noun plurals • Indefinite articles • Subject–verb agreement • Regular past tense • Relative clauses • Mean Segmental Type–Token Ratio (normalized for length of recording)

  40. Open questions Future studies • What is being proceduralized? What is the role of vocabulary and (morpho)syntactic knowledge in fluency? • Can a pre-training increase the effect of the 4/3/2 procedure? • How do repetition and time pressure influence fluency development in the 4/3/2 task?

  41. Repetition and Time Pressure • Repetition enables more retrieval, thus decreasing working memory load, opening up resources to construct new and more complex output • Time pressure may encourage retrieval and discourage construction of more complex output

  42. Individual analyses (preliminary) • Repetition: pretest – immediate posttest • 7 out of 10 students improved: pause length decreased with stable length of fluent run and phonation/time ratio • 2 out of 10 students did not improve • 1 student showed a trade-off between pause length (shorter) and length of fluent run (also shorter)

  43. Individual analyses (preliminary) • No Repetition : pretest – immediate posttest • 0 out of 9 students improved • 1 student showed a trade-off between pause length (longer) and length of fluent run (also longer) • Performance of 3 out of 9 students became worse (shorter fluent runs, longer pauses)

More Related