Longitudinal Examination of the Temporal Variables of Saudi ESL Speakers’ Reading Fluency

Abstract

The research reported in this paper explores the development of Saudi ESL speakers’ reading fluency by examining ten temporal variables as suggested by Kormos and Denes (2004). Thirty Saudi ESL students who share the same demographic characteristics were selected as participants in this research. Since this research is longitudinal in nature, each participant was given the same reading text to read at three different intervals (i.e. at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the course). PRAAT computer software speech analysis in phonetics is employed to analyze the elicited speech samples. The numerical data extracted from the analysis were analyzed using SPSS statistical software to provide a full descriptive statistics of all variables under investigation at each interval. A statistical test of one-way ANOVA was used to compare the means between and within intervals. The post-hoc test, Fisher’s Least Significant Difference (LSD) was employed to compare only the variables that were significant. Statistical analysis showed a significant development in Saudi ESL speakers’ reading fluency on four of the ten temporal variables under investigation. These temporal variables were phonation time ratio, the number of disfluencies per minute, pace and space. This research concluded that reading fluency gains that Saudi ESL speakers developed over time reflected gain in the way they have learnt to conceptualize the knowledge or to articulate speech in the target language rather than gain in the way linguistic knowledge is stored as procedural knowledge.