Fluency revisited
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[1] University of Turku
University of Turku
Turku, Finlandia
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- Localización: ELT journal: An international journal for teachers of English to speakers of other languages, ISSN 0951-0893, Vol. 78, Nº 4, 2024 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Special Issue: Generative Artificial Intelligence and ELT), págs. 489-492
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Fluency is a key indicator of second language (L2) oral proficiency and, as such, it is widely used as the basis of L2 assessment. As a concept, fluency is often characterized in terms of ‘smoothness and effortlessness of speech’ (Chambers 1997). As fluency is a key goal for L2 learners and an important focus in language teaching (e.g., Lintunen, Mutta, and Peltonen 2020), research on L2 speech fluency can offer important insights for teachers to support their learners’ speech fluency development. While there is a relatively long research tradition in studying L2 speech fluency, dating back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, we have seen significant growth in fluency research in the twenty-first century, including emerging research themes that contribute to new ways of conceptualizing fluency. Therefore, it is timely to revisit the Key Concept of fluency (discussed in ELT Journal 47; Hedge 1993) from the perspective of three themes that offer new ways of thinking about fluency and are particularly relevant for language teaching, learning, and assessment: fluency in interaction, the continuum between fluency and disfluency, and first language (L1) speaking style as a factor influencing L2 fluency.
