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Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency in Learner Corpus Research
Edited by Agnieszka Leńko-Szymańska and Sandra Götz
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 104] 2022
► pp. 273–298

Contextualizing fluency in advanced spoken learner language

A contrastive interlanguage analysis across L1s, task types and learning context variables

| Philipps University Marburg
| Independent
| University of Siegen
The present study investigates four types of core fluencemes (filled and unfilled pauses, discourse markers and repeats) in four components of the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (Gilquin et al. 2010). We test these fluencemes for (1) possible transfer effects, (2) the effect of task type, (3) the influence of the communicative behavior of the interlocutor and (4) other linguistic and non-linguistic variables. Our findings reveal L1 transfer effects for all variables, while learning context variables have a stable positive effect on learner fluency. Task type does not reveal unidirectional effects, while the communicative behavior of the interlocutor turned out to have a significant effect on the learners’ performance, indicating that processes of ‘confluence’ are at play.
Keywords: fluency, task effects, L1 transfer effects, learning context variables, confluence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Fluency in learner language
  • 2.Contextualizing learner fluency as a multifaceted phenomenon
  • 3.Database and methodology
    • 3.1Database and coding procedure
      • Discourse Markers
      • Unfilled Pauses
      • Filled Pauses
      • Repeats
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1Unfilled pauses
    • 4.2Filled pauses
    • 4.3Discourse markers
    • 4.4Repeats
    • 4.5Model summary and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.104.11got
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