What shapes communicative adequacy in second language speaking performance? The contributions of complexity, accuracy, fluency, and pronunciation

This doctoral dissertation investigates the linguistic performance of German elementary school English teachers and how their second language (L2) English performance relates to their students' acquisition of English as a foreign language. The studies reflect the teachers' L2 language performance, give insights into the interrelationships of the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) dimensions of L2 language production, and finally address how linguistic performance relates to the students' L2 development. Following a mixed-methods approach, the first study analyzed the language performance elicited in semi-structured qualitative interviews with eleven German elementary school English teachers based on CAF measures. The second study focuses on the students' language development of a sub-set of four of the interviewed teachers. The students (N = 132) were given picture pointing tasks of either receptive grammar, receptive vocabulary or both at two times during the fourth year of elementary school. The key finding was that the whole group’s mean grammar score significantly improved from time one to time two. The increase of the mean vocabulary score was not statistically significant. When the students were grouped with their respective teachers, comparisons exposed significant differences between some of the groups. The third study synthesizes the teachers’ CAF performance and the students’ development in receptive English grammar and vocabulary. A principal components analysis (PCA) first calculated the variability of the range of the measures for complexity, accuracy, and fluency and their contributions to each CAF dimension. Correlation analyses between the dimensions revealed several robust significant correlations for complexity, accuracy, and fluency as captured in breakdown fluency and speed fluency. Repair fluency and lexical diversity correlated with breakdown and speed fluency, but not with accuracy and complexity. Based on the teachers’ composite CAF scores calculated in the PCA and the students’ test scores, the relationships between the teachers’ language performances and their students’ L2 development were analyzed. Multiple regression analyses retained breakdown fluency, measured in the number and length of pauses as part of the fluency dimension, as the only dimension significantly predicting the students’ receptive grammar development. The results point to several conclusions: First, the significant correlations between complexity, accuracy, and fluency in terms of breakdown and speed fluency indicate that the dimensions did not come at the expense of one another in the L2 performance on the cross-sectional interview task used in this study. Second, the students’ significant improvement in receptive English grammar implies some positive development of elementary school L2 English as a whole. However, the high variability among the students’ scores indicates other factors being at play in the children’s L2 development in addition to the teachers’ performance investigated in this study. Third, breakdown fluency as a specific feature of the teachers’ spoken language performance may have a beneficial effect on the children’s receptive English grammar acquisition. This finding is in line with observations of pausing as an element of L2 teacher talk as well as a prosodic feature in child-directed speech in first language acquisition that potentially aids language learners in segmenting linguistic input. The findings propose that future research take into consideration specific features in the L2 input and examine them as possible factors in children’s L2 language acquisition. Der Anhang dieser Veroffentlichung steht ebenfalls als elektronische Publikation im Internet kostenfrei (Open Access) zur Verfugung unter: http://dx.doi.org/10.18442/084

The present study compares the differential effects of two learning contexts on the L2 pronunciation accuracy of L1‐Spanish/Catalan teenage learners of English. The learners engaged in either a study abroad (SA) course in the UK (n = 14) or in an intensive course at home (AH) in Spain (n = 22) for 3 weeks. Sentence‐sized production samples were elicited before and after the SA and AH courses through a delayed imitation task targeting difficult L2 phonetic and phonological features. L2 pronunciation accuracy was assessed through voice onset time (VOT) and perceived foreign accent (FA) measures. The results indicated that the SA learner group significantly improved their VOT and reduced their FA to a greater extent than the AH learner group did. VOT gains were significantly correlated with amount of FA reduction, suggesting that speakers who had developed a more target‐like production of oral stops were also perceived to have reduced their overall FA to a greater extent. Taken together these results underscore the potential of SA to induce improvement in L2 pronunciation. Several pedagogical implications are discussed.

Dysphagia is commonly evaluated using videofluoroscopy (VFS). As its ratings are usually subjective normal-abnormal ratings, objective measurements have been developed. We compared the inter-rater reliability of the usual VFS ratings to the objective measurement VFS ratings and evaluated their clinical relevance. Two blinded raters analyzed the subjective normal-abnormal ratings of 77 patients' VFS. Two other blinded raters analyzed the objective measurements of pharyngeal aerated area with bolus held in the oral cavity (PAhold), the pharyngeal area of residual bolus during swallowing (PAmax), the pharyngeal constriction ratio (PCR), the maximum pharyngoesophageal segment opening (PESmax), pharyngoesophageal segment opening duration (POD), airway closure duration (ACD), and total pharyngeal transit time (TPT). We evaluated the inter-rater agreement in the subjective ratings and the objective measurements. Clinical utility analysis compared the measurements with the VFS findings of pharyngeal phase abnormality, penetration/aspiration, and cricopharyngeal relaxation. In the pharyngeal findings, the subjective analysis inter-rater agreement was mainly moderate to strong. The strongest agreements were on the pharyngeal residues and penetration/aspiration findings. The objective measurements had fair to good inter-rater agreement. Clinical utility analysis found statistically significant connections between TPT and pharyngeal phase abnormality, normal PCR and lack of penetration/aspiration, and normal PESmax and normal cricopharyngeal relaxation. The subjective analysis had moderate to strong inter-rater agreement in the pharyngeal VFS findings, especially concerning pharyngeal residues and penetration/aspiration detection, reflecting the efficacy and safety of swallowing. The objective measurements had fair to good inter-observer reproducibility and could thus improve the reliability of VFS diagnostics. 4.

BackgroundIt is well known that the condition and type of sporting ground influences the risk of sports injury. However, the lack of evidence on the relationship between subjective and objective sporting ground condition assessments in sports injury aetiology studies has implications for the development of effective injury prevention strategies. This paper aims to examine concordance between subjectively rated and objective ground hardness and moisture measurements to inform data collection methods for future sports injury aetiology studies.MethodsSubjective, observational assessments of ground hardness and soil moisture were recorded on 36 occasions during an Australian football season using two four-point scales of ‘very soft’ to ‘very hard’ and ‘very wet’ to ‘very dry’, respectively. Independent, objectively measured hardness and soil moisture were also undertaken at nine locations on the same grounds. The maximum and minimum ground values and the computed average of ground hardness and soil moisture were analysed. Somer’s d statistic was calculated to measure the level of concordance between the subjective and objective measures.ResultsA significant, moderate to substantial level of agreement was found between the subjective ratings and the average objective hardness values (d = 0.467, p <0.001), but there was perfect agreement on just less than half of the occasions. The level of concordance between the subjective and objective moisture ratings was low to moderate or trivial for all moisture measures (0.002 < d <0.264, p >0.05).ConclusionsCompared to objective measures, the subjective assessments were more accurate for ground hardness than for soil moisture levels and raters were just as likely to underestimate or overestimate the condition under review. This has implications for future sports injury aetiology studies that include ground condition assessments and particularly the use of subjective measures to underpin the development of future injury prevention strategies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40621-014-0027-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The current study examined the extent to which first language (L1) utterance fluency measures can predict second language (L2) fluency and how L2 proficiency moderates the relationship between L1 and L2 fluency. A total of 104 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed different argumentative speech tasks in their L1 and L2. Their speaking performance was analysed using measures of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. L2 proficiency was operationalised as cognitive fluency. Two factor scores of cognitive fluency—linguistic resources and processing speed—were computed based on performance in a set of linguistic knowledge tests capturing vocabulary knowledge, morphosyntactic processing, and articulatory skills. A series of generalised linear mixed-effects models revealed small-to-moderate effect sizes for the predictive power of L1 utterance fluency measures on their L2 counterparts. Moderator effects of L2 proficiency were found only in speed fluency measures. The relationship between L1 and L2 speed fluency was weaker for L2 learners with wider L2 linguistic resources. Conversely, for those with faster L2 processing speed, the L1-L2 link tended to be stronger. These findings indicate that the L1-L2 fluency link is subject to the complex interplay of phonological differences between learners’ L1 and L2 and their L2 proficiency, offering implications for diagnostic speaking assessment.

Presentation of images with known pathology similar to that of a new unknown lesion would be helpful for radiologists in their diagnosis of breast cancer. In order to find images that are really similar and useful to radiologists, we determined the radiologists' subjective similarity ratings for pairs of masses, and investigated objective similarity measures that would agree well with the subjective ratings. Fifty sets of images, each of which included one image in the center and six other images to be compared with the center image, were selected; thus, 300 pairs of images were prepared. Ten breast radiologists provided the subjective similarity ratings for each image pair in terms of the overall impression for diagnosis. The objective similarity measures based on cross-correlation of the images, differences in feature values, and psychophysical measures by use of an artificial neural network were determined. The objective measures based on the cross-correlation were found to be not correlated with the subjective similarity ratings (r < 0.1). The differences in the features characterizing the margin were relatively strong indicators of the similarity (r > 0.40). When several image features were used, the differences-based objective measure was moderately correlated (r = 0.59) with the subjective ratings. The relatively high correlation coefficient (r = 0.74) was obtained for the psychophysical similarity measure. The similar images selected by use of the psychophysical measure can be useful to radiologists in the diagnosis of breast cancer.

Objective and subjective measures of performance in virtual reality environments increase as more sensory cues are delivered and as simulation fidelity increases. Some cues (colour or sound) are easier to present than others (object weight, vestibular cues) so that substitute cues can be used to enhance informational content in a simulation at the expense of simulation fidelity. This study evaluates how substituting cues in one modality by alternative cues in another modality affects subjective and objective performance measures in a highly immersive virtual reality environment. Participants performed a wheel change in a virtual reality (VR) environment. Auditory, haptic and visual cues, signalling critical events in the simulation, were manipulated in a factorial design. Subjective ratings were recorded via questionnaires. The time taken to complete the task was used as an objective performance measure. The results show that participants performed best and felt an increased sense of immersion and involvement, collectively referred to as ‘presence’, when substitute multimodal sensory feedback was provided. Significant main effects of audio and tactile cues on task performance and on participants' subjective ratings were found. A significant negative relationship was found between the objective (overall completion times) and subjective (ratings of presence) performance measures. We conclude that increasing informational content, even if it disrupts fidelity, enhances performance and user’s overall experience. On this basis we advocate the use of substitute cues in VR environments as an efficient method to enhance performance and user experience.

This study investigates the efficacy of the type of instruction (i.e., perception-based vs. production-based) on second language (L2) pronunciation acquisition in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. To achieve this objective, 60 tertiary-level Jordanian learners of English were recruited and put into two groups (30 learners in each group). Group A received 6 weeks of perception-based instruction on both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of English pronunciation, and Group B received production-based instruction over the same period and on the same aspects of pronunciation. Progress in L2 pronunciation was assessed at three time points (i.e., week 1, week 6, and week 14). Pre-, post- and delayed post-tests were run to achieve the study’s objective. A statistical analysis was conducted to analyse the data. The results show that both groups demonstrated a significant improvement in L2 pronunciation accuracy; in particular, Group A which received perception-based instruction demonstrated higher gains in segmental, syllabic, and prosodic aspects while Group B which received production-based instruction demonstrated more improvement in both global (i.e., comprehensibility) and temporal (i.e., fluency) aspects of pronunciation. However, both groups demonstrated similar gains on the delayed post-test. The findings provide implications for L2 pronunciation learners and teachers on the impact of the type of instruction on the addressed aspects of pronunciation.

This study used interval scaling to assess degree of perceived foreign accent in English sentences spoken by native and non-native talkers. Native English listeners gave significantly higher (i.e., more authentic) pronunciation scores to native speakers of English than to Chinese adults who began learning English at an average age of 7.6 years. The results for the "child learners" suggest that a sensitive period for speech learning is reached long before the age of 12 years, as commonly supposed. Adults who had lived in the U.S. for 5 years did not receive higher scores than those who had lived there for only 1 year, suggesting that amount of unaided second-language (L2) experience does not affect adults' L2 pronunciation beyond an initial rapid stage of learning. Native speakers of Chinese who rated the sentences for foreign accent showed the same pattern of between-group differences as the native English listeners. The more experienced of two groups of Chinese listeners differentiated native and non-native talkers to a significantly greater extent than a less experienced group, even though the subjects in both groups spoke English with equally strong foreign accents. This suggests that tacit knowledge of how L2 sentences "ought" to sound increases more rapidly than the ability to produce those sentences.

Linguistic complexity in L2 writing revisited: Issues of topic, proficiency, and construct multidimensionality

The present study investigated whether a distinct link exists between attention-shift, foreign language anxiety (FLA) and both a subjective and an objective measure of oral fluency. Participants were 34 French first language (L1) English second language (L2) speakers. Oral production data were collected through a picture-cued narration task and analysed using both oral fluency measures. We used a measure of attention-shift capacity and a measure of FLA. Results first show strong correlations between both fluency measures. Additionally, both measures of fluency were negatively correlated with FLA and attention-shift. However, multiple regression analyses indicated that only the subjective measure was explained by both attention-shift capacity and FLA, the objective one only being explained by FLA. The results suggest that subjective measures, while highly correlated with objective ones, may detect qualities of oral fluency not detected by objective measures.

Previous fluency studies typically used small datasets to analyze L2 learners' oral performance with objective fluency measures, and found positive correlation between objective measures and subjective ratings. Findings from a small dataset are difficult to generalize. However, it takes a great deal of time and effort to build a large dataset with various measures. To help facilitate this process, CAF Calculator, which outputs 50 fluency measures, has been developed. In this chapter, CAF Calculator and a workflow to compute fluency measures are introduced along with a study investigating utterance fluency of L2 learners of Japanese at two proficiency levels performing two tasks. The study found significant differences in speed, breakdown, and composite fluency measures between the two groups in both tasks. It also found that task type affects pause locations. It is hoped that the research tools introduced in this chapter will encourage more research on fluency.

Many factors influencing second language (L2) speech fluency have been widely studied, but the effects of first language (L1) fluency on L2 speech fluency are still relatively poorly understood. In contrast to mostly quantitative previous studies, the present study adopted a mixed methods approach to examining the connections between L1 fluency and L2 fluency. Monologue speech samples in L1 and L2 were obtained from 42 Finnish learners of English at 2 school levels (9th grade and upper secondary school). The samples were examined for 13 measures capturing different aspects of fluency: temporal fluency, including speed and pausing, and stalling mechanisms. The results indicated positive correlations between the majority of temporal L1 and L2 fluency measures. Regression analyses further demonstrated that most temporal L2 fluency measures could be predicted from L1 fluency measures to a certain extent, although the predictive power varied across the measures. Regarding stalling mechanisms, a complementary qualitative analysis provided insights to idiosyncratic patterns in their use in L1 and L2. Together, the findings suggest that L1 fluency is an important factor in explaining L2 fluency and should be more widely acknowledged in L2 fluency research, assessment, and teaching.

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of several objective measures in terms of predicting the quality of noisy speech enhanced by noise suppression algorithms. The objective measures considered a wide range of distortions introduced by four types of real-world noise at two signal-to-noise ratio levels by four classes of speech enhancement algorithms: spectral subtractive, subspace, statistical-model based, and Wiener algorithms. The subjective quality ratings were obtained using the ITU-T P.835 methodology designed to evaluate the quality of enhanced speech along three dimensions: signal distortion, noise distortion, and overall quality. This paper reports on the evaluation of correlations of several objective measures with these three subjective rating scales. Several new composite objective measures are also proposed by combining the individual objective measures using nonparametric and parametric regression analysis techniques.

Teacher feedback, regarded as a hot topic in the L2 writing field, has aroused the researcher’s interest to investigate this area for improving EFL students’ L2 writing. This study situates in the Cambodian EFL context, where feedback research is insufficient and the impact of teacher feedback on EFL students’ L2 writing largely remains the need for discussion and investigation in the EFL context of L2 writing. This study, therefore, is to investigate two aspects of teacher feedback impact, namely, students’ perceptions of teacher feedback impact and students’ performances in L2 writing. More specifically, it aims at investigating (1) the Cambodian EFL students’ perceptions of teacher corrective feedback on their L2 writing, (2) the impact of teacher feedback on the CAF performance in Cambodian EFL students’ L2 writing, and (3) the factors contributing to the impact of teacher feedback on Cambodian EFL students’ performance in L2 writing. This study follows a mixed-method research design. It combined quantitative and qualitative methods to collect and analyze data. To find out the impact of teacher feedback on students’ L2 writing, this study selected eighty participants to produce English writings. Twenty of them were asked to attend the interview sessions for their perceptions of teacher feedback. The sources of data included written products, semi-structured interviews, and teacher’s written feedback. Data collection was completed by implementing the writing task, conducting interviews, and completing teacher’s written feedback. The testing and interviews were to collect data to provide the evidence, reliability, and validity of this study. The measures for CAF in L2 writing were frequencies (elaborate frequency, error frequency, or error-free frequency), error types, error-free units, T-units, errors per unit, error-free T-units, and length of product units. For data analysis, this study adopted six procedural aspects, namely, developing the coding schemes for written products, determining measure for CAF in L2 writing, analyzing the interview transcripts, analyzing students’ written products, analyzing teacher’s written feedback, and processing the quantitative data with SPSS 21.0. In accordance with the interpreted findings of interview transcripts, Cambodian EFL participants perceived L2 writing as a complex and challenging work. Most interviewee students responded that they urgently needed teacher corrective feedback to develop complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in L2 writing because teachers could help them correct the L2 writing errors and induce self-revision, self-editing, self-correction, or self-repair on L2 writing drafts. Meanwhile, the interviewees attempted to meliorate the language competence in L2 writing – improving the grammatical accuracy, lexical choices, linguistic accuracy, language proficiency, mechanics, and linguistic form and structure. The analysis of students’ sample writings showed that the treatments of teacher corrective feedback on L2 writing enabled and benefited Cambodian EFL students to improve the complexity, accuracy, and fluency in L2 writing, particularly in the aspects of syntactic and lexical improvement. Teacher corrective feedback was more effective for the corrections of students’ L2 writing errors and the development of students’ L2 writing revision, L2 writing skills, and CAF performance in L2 writing. Importantly, direct feedback strategies on L2 writing errors, indirect feedback strategies on L2 writing revision, linguistic aspects as teacher feedback on language writing, and students’ intakes of teacher corrective feedback were considered the effect factors to the impact of teacher corrective feedback on Cambodian EFL students’ L2 writings. As has been noted from the results and findings, teacher corrective feedback plays an essential role in the learning and teaching of L2 writing. Teacher corrective feedback benefits EFL students to have self-motivation and ensure their CAF improvement in L2 writing, and it changes EFL learners’ L2 writing attitudes and challenges and provides EFL students guidelines to ameliorate L2 writing through self-revision, self-edition, self-repair, and self-correction or self-assessment. Additionally, teacher corrective feedback serves as the provision of scaffolding to build EFL learners’ confidence and literacy of L2 writing and meliorate L2 writing skills and L2 writing revisions. The variation of teacher corrective feedback is considered as an important issue for both feedback and classroom research design of L2 writing. Significantly, teacher corrective feedback can help Cambodian EFL students improve their performance in lexical choices, mechanics, linguistic accuracy, and language proficiency in L2 writing performance. Finally, this study provides the pedagogical implications, namely, making better use of teacher corrective feedback, learning about the trends in teacher feedback in L2 writing pedagogy, importance of linguistic aspects as the focus of teacher feedback, and understanding of the distinctive applications of teacher feedback. Future investigations can examine more aspects, in addition to CAF, of the effectiveness of teacher corrective feedback impact on EFL students’ L2 writings.