Potential of Text‐Based Internet Chats for Improving Oral Fluency in a Second Language

Abstract

Although a number of studies have reported on the positive effects of Internet chats in the second language classroom, to the best of my knowledge no studies to date have examined the effect of text‐based chats on oral fluency development. This exploratory study addressed the above question by examining the oral fluency development of 34 English as a second language learners who participated in the same 6‐week course but in separate instructional environments: a text‐based Internet chat environment, a traditional face‐to‐face environment, and a control environment that involved no student interaction.The study found that the gain scores of participants in the text‐based Internet chat environment were significantly higher on the phonation time ratio and mean length of run measures than the gain scores of participants in the face‐to‐face and control environments (prior to Bonferroni adjustment). Gain scores on the three other measures were not significant. The author discusses these findings in relationship to Levelt's (1989) model of language production and argues that text‐based Internet chat environments can be a useful way of building oral fluency by facilitating the automatization of lexical and grammatical knowledge at the formulator level.