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Approaches and Methods in French Second Language Acquisition Research
Edited by Martin Howard
[Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 9] 2025
► pp. 71–96

Chapter 4
Researching fluency in L2 French

 | University of Leeds
This chapter evaluates current questions in researching L2 French fluency and understanding the implications for SLA more broadly. Traditionally, research investigated fluency in narrow temporal terms of smooth production without undue pauses or repetitions, often comparing L2 speakers to English prestige norms in decontextualised monologic tasks. However, recent studies focus on broader discourse-level models of fluency, recognising sociopragmatic demands of authentic dialogic interaction in plurilingual contexts, whether face to face or online. L2 French research provides an excellent basis for adopting this more diverse, authentic view of L2 fluency, using a broad range of empirical and corpus-based methods, including data gathered in seminal residence abroad projects. We explore how to conduct future studies in an ethical, inclusive and transparent way, which will both redress the imbalance of the current focus on L2 English, and provide reliable data to enrich our understanding of the new global digitally adept L2 French speaker.
Keywords: temporal fluency, discourse fluency, sociopragmatics, residence abroad, plurilingual, diverse, authentic
Article outline
  • Introduction — Setting the context for L2 French fluency research
  • The internal perspective
    • Fluent speech production
    • Fluency in L2 French
    • Methodological considerations in L2 French fluency
  • The external perspective
    • Discourse fluency
    • Residence abroad
  • Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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