The development of EFL students’ speech fluency: A phase transition investigation based on a complex dynamic systems perspective

Dony Marzuki
Politeknik Negeri Padang

This study investigated phase transitions in EFL students’ speech fluency development using a complex dynamic systems perspective. Two students with different proficiency levels were selected from an intact speaking class. These students learned and practiced specific strategies to improve their speech fluency. Phase transitions were analyzed based on three criteria: sudden jumps, anomalous variance, and qualitative change in the attractor. Number of syllables was used as the speech fluency measure. The results suggest that only the higher-proficiency student underwent one phase transition. These findings imply that a short explicit fluency strategy training intervention could improve the speech fluency development of high-proficiency students in EFL classrooms. The results have implications for theory and pedagogical practice relating to EFL students’ speech fluency development.

Publication history

Date received: 22 October 2022

Date accepted: 18 January 2023

Published online: 24 July 2023

Table of contents

Complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) views language as a complex system. It considers language as the product of emergent assemblies of interconnected components that form a connected whole through interaction (Van Geert, 2008). This system is constantly changing and is “hardly ever stable and cannot be characterized as predetermined and linear” (Lowie & Verspoor, 2019). Although a system usually changes continuously in a particular state, it can sometimes experience a radical or discontinuous change that causes the system to undergo reorganization into a higher-level state, known as ‘emergence’ (Van Dijk & Van Geert, 2007). Emergence is a general principle for explaining a developmental change in a CDST approach (Lewis, 2000). Emergence contains critical moments (phase transitions) in learners’ development that could explain what causes it and how it emerges. Hence, “emergence is characterized by phase transition, or conversely, the phase transition is the change with emergent properties” (Baba & Nitta, 2014, p. 5). Identifying phase transitions and clarifying how the whole system operates around an emergence become the primary goal of research based on this approach (Baba & Nitta, 2014; Kelso, 1995).

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