The Relationship between WTC and Oral Proficiency Measurements in the Study Abroad Context

Graham G Robson

doi:10.5539/ies.v8n12p56

Abstract

<p class="apa">Theories of second language acquisition such as the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996) and Pushed Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1995) emphasize that learners must actually communicate in order to bring about the conditions for language acquisition. Learners who are more willing to communicate may create more opportunities for interaction, and thereby possibly improve their spoken proficiency. In L2 research fluency, accuracy and complexity have been used to extensively measure spoken output. This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate a largely under-researched area: whether there is a relation between fluency, accuracy and complexity, task engagement, and measures of willingness to communicate and actual learner communication and how these change for a group of 23 high-proficiency mainly Asian L2 English learners on a nine-week academic preparation course at a university in England.</p>

Highlights

Students embark on study abroad programs of varying lengths to interact with the culture and improve their linguistic skills
The standard check for skewness and kurtosis is the standard error of measurement (SE) divided by the skewness/kurtosis value, which gives a Z score of standard error of skewness/kurtosis
The analyses showed that of the 18 independent variables, Self-Perceived Communicative Competence (SPCC) was the only significant predictor of the final teacher engagement score (F (1, 21) = 11.16, p < .05)

Summary

Introduction

Students embark on study abroad programs of varying lengths to interact with the culture and improve their linguistic skills. Through immersion in the second language setting, students are able to surround themselves with language opportunities that they might not find in their home countries (Freed, 1998). Linguistic skills acquired through study abroad are often measured via fluency, accuracy and complexity in second language research. Researchers agree that oral output measures like fluency increase after study abroad, even for periods of up to one semester (Freed, Segalowitz, & Dewey, 2004; Segalowitz & Freed, 2004; Trenchs-Parera 2009). Underlying the results of accuracy and complexity is the belief that these two facets of oral production develop in different ways to fluency (Gass & Selinker, 2001)

Methods

Results

Conclusion