Fluency

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Fluency (also called volubility and eloquency) refers to continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production. [1] It is also used to characterize language production, language ability or language proficiency.

Contents

In speech language pathology it means the flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined when speaking quickly, where fluency disorder has been used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering.

Definition

Fluency is a term concerning language production on the one hand, which is used in language ability or language proficiency It is also used to characterize speech production on the other hand with some overlap.

In speech language pathology it means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined when speaking quickly. [2] It refers to "continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production". [1] The term fluency disorder has been used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering since at least 1993. [1]

Fluency is the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise.[ original research? ]

Language use

Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person's language ability, [3] often used in conjunction with accuracy and complexity. [4] Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, [3] [5] [6] someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears fluid, or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use. [5] In other words, fluency is often described as the ability to produce language on demand and be understood. [7]

Varying definitions of fluency characterize it by the language user's automaticity, [8] their speed and coherency of language use, [9] or the length and rate of their speech output. [10] Theories of automaticity postulate that more fluent language users can manage all of the components of language use without paying attention to each individual component of the act. [11] In other words, fluency is achieved when one can access language knowledge and produce language unconsciously, or automatically. [12] [7] Theories that focus on speed or length and rate of speech typically expect fluent language users to produce language in real time without unusual pauses, false starts, or repetitions (recognizing that some presence of these elements are naturally part of speech). [4] [7] Fluency is sometimes considered to be a measure of performance rather than an indicator of more concrete language knowledge, and thus perception and understandability are often key ways that fluency is understood. [6]

Language fluency is sometimes contrasted with accuracy (or correctness of language use, especially grammatical correctness) [5] and complexity (or a more encompassing knowledge of vocabulary and discourse strategies). [3] Fluency, accuracy, and complexity are distinct but interrelated components of language acquisition and proficiency.

Types

There are four commonly discussed types of fluency: reading fluency, oral fluency, oral-reading fluency, and written or compositional fluency. These types of fluency are interrelated, but do not necessarily develop in tandem or linearly. One may develop fluency in certain type(s) and be less fluent or nonfluent in others. [7]

In the sense of proficiency, "fluency" encompasses a number of related but separable skills:

In second-language acquisition

Because an assessment of fluency is typically a measure or characterization of one's language ability, determining fluency may be a more challenging task when the speaker is acquiring a second language. It is generally thought that the later in life a learner approaches the study of a foreign language, the harder it is to acquire receptive (auditory) comprehension and fluent production (speaking) skills. For adults, once their mother tongue has already been established, the acquisition of a second language can come more slowly and less completely, ultimately affecting fluency. However, the critical period hypothesis is a hotly debated topic, with some scholars stating that adults can in fact become fluent in acquiring a second language.[ citation needed ] For instance, reading and writing skills in a foreign language can be acquired more easily even after the primary language acquisition period of youth is over. [2]

So although it is often assumed that young children learn languages more easily than adolescents and adults, [15] [16] the reverse is in fact true; older learners are faster.[ citation needed ] The only exception to this rule is in pronunciation. Young children invariably learn to speak their second language with native-like pronunciation, whereas learners who start learning a language at an older age only rarely reach a native-like level. [16]

Second-language acquisition in children

Since childhood is a critical period, widespread opinion holds that it is easier for young children to learn a second language than it is for adults. Children can even acquire native fluency when exposed to the language on a consistent basis with rich interaction in a social setting. In addition to capacity, factors like; 1) motivation, 2) aptitude, 3) personality characteristics, 4) age of acquisition 5) first language typology 6) socio-economic status and 7) quality and context of L2 input play a role in L2 acquisitions rate and building fluency. [17] Second language acquisition (SLA) has the ability to influence children's cognitive growth and linguistic development.

Skill that consists of ability to produce words in target language develops until adolescence. Natural ability to acquire a new language with a deliberate effort may begin to diminish around puberty i.e. 12–14 years of age. Learning environment, comprehensible instructional materials, teacher, and the learner are indispensable elements in SLA and developing fluency in children. Extensive reading in L2 can offer twofold benefits in foreign language learning i.e. "reading to comprehend English and reading to learn English".[ citation needed ]

Paradis (2006) [17] study on childhood language acquisition and building fluency examines how first and second language acquisition patterns are generally similar including vocabulary and morphosyntax. Phonology of first language is usually apparent in SLA and initial L1 influence can be lifelong, even for child L2 learners. [17]

Children can acquire a second language simultaneously (learn L1 and L2 at the same time) or sequentially (learn L1 first and then L2). In the end, they develop fluency in both with one dominant language which is spoken largely by the community they live in.

According to one You Tube video from 2014, there are five stages of SLA and developing fluency: [18] [ better source needed ]

  1. Pre-production OR Silent/receptive
  2. Early production
  3. Speech emergence
  4. Intermediate fluency
  5. Advanced fluency.

Second-language acquisition in adults

The process of learning a second language or "L2," among older learners differs from younger learners because of their working memory. Working memory, also connected to fluency because it deals with automatic responses, is vital to language acquisition. This happens when information is stored and manipulated temporarily. During working memory, words are filtered, processed, and rehearsed, and information is stored while focusing on the next piece of interaction. [19] These false starts, pauses or repetitions found in fluency assessments, can also be found within one's working memory as part of communication.

Those with education at or below a high school level are least likely to take language classes. It has also been found that women and young immigrants are more likely to take language classes. [20] Further, highly educated immigrants who are searching for skilled jobs – which require interpersonal and intercultural skills that are difficult to learn – are the most affected by lower fluency in the L2.

Speech-language pathology

Fluency is a speech language pathology term which means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined when speaking quickly. [2] The term fluency disorder has been used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering. Both disorders have breaks in the fluidity of speech, and both have the fluency breakdown of repetition of parts of speech. [21]

Automatic assessment of language fluency

Several automatic systems have been developed to assess speech fluency in children or in second-language learners. The first systems used automatic speech recognition to compute objective measures such as speech or articulation rate, that were strongly associated with subjective ratings of speech fluency. [22] More recent studies showed that automatic acoustic measures (i.e., without using any automatic speech recognition system) can also be used to measure speech fluency in second-language learners [23] [24] or in children. [25]

In creativity

As of 1988, studies in the assessment of creativity listed fluency as one of the four primary elements in creative thinking, the others being flexibility, originality and elaboration. Fluency in creative thinking is seen as the ability to think of many diverse ideas quickly. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

A communication disorder is any disorder that affects an individual's ability to comprehend, detect, or apply language and speech to engage in dialogue effectively with others. The delays and disorders can range from simple sound substitution to the inability to understand or use one's native language.

A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with, is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "the first language learned in childhood and still spoken", recognizing that for some, the earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment.

A heritage language is a minority language learned by its speakers at home as children, and difficult to be fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment. The speakers grow up with a different dominant language in which they become more competent. Polinsky and Kagan label it as a continuum that ranges from fluent speakers to barely speaking individuals of the home language. In some countries or cultures which determine a person's mother tongue by the ethnic group they belong to, a heritage language would be linked to the native language.

Second-language acquisition (SLA), sometimes called second-language learning — otherwise referred to as L2acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is regarded by some but not everybody as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phonemic awareness</span> Subset of phonological awareness

Phonemic awareness is a subset of phonological awareness in which listeners are able to hear, identify and manipulate phonemes, the smallest mental units of sound that help to differentiate units of meaning (morphemes). Separating the spoken word "cat" into three distinct phonemes,, , and, requires phonemic awareness. The National Reading Panel has found that phonemic awareness improves children's word reading and reading comprehension and helps children learn to spell. Phonemic awareness is the basis for learning phonics.

An interlanguage is an idiolect which has been developed by a learner of a second language (L2) which preserves some features of their first language (L1) and can overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristics give an interlanguage its unique linguistic organization. It is idiosyncratically based on the learner's experiences with L2. An interlanguage can fossilize, or cease developing, in any of its developmental stages. It is claimed that several factors shape interlanguage rules, including L1 transfer, previous learning strategies, strategies of L2 acquisition, L2 communication strategies, and the overgeneralization of L2 language patterns.

Cluttering is a speech and communication disorder characterized by a rapid rate of speech, erratic rhythm, and poor syntax or grammar, making speech difficult to understand.

Sequential bilingualism occurs when a person becomes bilingual by first learning one language and then another. The process is contrasted with simultaneous bilingualism, in which both languages are learned at the same time.

Automatic pronunciation assessment is the use of speech recognition to verify the correctness of pronounced speech, as distinguished from manual assessment by an instructor or proctor. Also called speech verification, pronunciation evaluation, and pronunciation scoring, the main application of this technology is computer-aided pronunciation teaching (CAPT) when combined with computer-aided instruction for computer-assisted language learning (CALL), speech remediation, or accent reduction. Pronunciation assessment does not determine unknown speech but instead, knowing the expected word(s) in advance, it attempts to verify the correctness of the learner's pronunciation and ideally their intelligibility to listeners, sometimes along with often inconsequential prosody such as intonation, pitch, tempo, rhythm, and stress. Pronunciation assessment is also used in reading tutoring, for example in products such as Microsoft Teams and from Amira Learning. Automatic pronunciation assessment can also be used to help diagnose and treat speech disorders such as apraxia.

Bimodal bilingualism is an individual or community's bilingual competency in at least one oral language and at least one sign language, which utilize two different modalities. An oral language consists of an vocal-aural modality versus a signed language which consists of a visual-spatial modality. A substantial number of bimodal bilinguals are children of deaf adults (CODA) or other hearing people who learn sign language for various reasons. Deaf people as a group have their own sign language(s) and culture that is referred to as Deaf, but invariably live within a larger hearing culture with its own oral language. Thus, "most deaf people are bilingual to some extent in [an oral] language in some form" In discussions of multilingualism in the United States, bimodal bilingualism and bimodal bilinguals have often not been mentioned or even considered, in part because American Sign Language, the predominant sign language used in the U.S., only began to be acknowledged as a natural language in the 1960s. However, bimodal bilinguals share many of the same traits as traditional bilinguals, as well as differing in some interesting ways, due to the unique characteristics of the Deaf community. Bimodal bilinguals also experience similar neurological benefits as do unimodal bilinguals, with significantly increased grey matter in various brain areas and evidence of increased plasticity as well as neuroprotective advantages that can help slow or even prevent the onset of age-related cognitive diseases, such as Alzheimer's and dementia.

The critical period hypothesis or sensitive period hypothesis claims that there is an ideal time window of brain development to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition becomes much more difficult and effortful. It is the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age. The critical period hypothesis was first proposed by Montreal neurologist Wilder Penfield and co-author Lamar Roberts in their 1959 book Speech and Brain Mechanisms, and was popularized by Eric Lenneberg in 1967 with Biological Foundations of Language.

Developmental dysfluency, or "normal dysfluency", is a lack of language fluency that occurs during early childhood development. It is commonly observed in children ages 2 to 4 years old. This typically occurs as they begin to learn language and communication skills. Developmental dysfluency refers to speech that is continually interrupted rather than flowing naturally. Developmental dysfluency is most commonly expressed through inconsistencies in speech such as stuttering, repetition, lengthening of sounds and syllables, mistiming, and poor inflection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reading</span> Taking in the meaning of letters or symbols

Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.

Speech shadowing is a psycholinguistic experimental technique in which subjects repeat speech at a delay to the onset of hearing the phrase. The time between hearing the speech and responding, is how long the brain takes to process and produce speech. The task instructs participants to shadow speech, which generates intent to reproduce the phrase while motor regions in the brain unconsciously process the syntax and semantics of the words spoken. Words repeated during the shadowing task would also imitate the parlance of the shadowed speech.

The main purpose of theories of second-language acquisition (SLA) is to shed light on how people who already know one language learn a second language. The field of second-language acquisition involves various contributions, such as linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and education. These multiple fields in second-language acquisition can be grouped as four major research strands: (a) linguistic dimensions of SLA, (b) cognitive dimensions of SLA, (c) socio-cultural dimensions of SLA, and (d) instructional dimensions of SLA. While the orientation of each research strand is distinct, they are in common in that they can guide us to find helpful condition to facilitate successful language learning. Acknowledging the contributions of each perspective and the interdisciplinarity between each field, more and more second language researchers are now trying to have a bigger lens on examining the complexities of second language acquisition.

Individual variation in second-language acquisition is the study of why some people learn a second language better than others. Unlike children who acquire a language, adults learning a second language rarely reach the same level of competence as native speakers of that language. Some may stop studying a language before they have fully internalized it, and others may stop improving despite living in a foreign country for many years. It also appears that children are more likely than adults to reach native-like competence in a second language. There have been many studies that have attempted to explain these phenomena.

Second-language acquisition classroom research is an area of research in second-language acquisition concerned with how people learn languages in educational settings. There is a significant overlap between classroom research and language education. Classroom research is empirical, basing its findings on data and statistics wherever possible. It is also more concerned with what the learners do in the classroom than with what the teacher does. Where language teaching methods may only concentrate on the activities the teacher plans for the class, classroom research concentrates on the effect the things the teacher does has on the students.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to second-language acquisition:

Language power (LP) is a measure of one's ability to communicate effectively in a given language, specifically one that is not native to the speaker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Test of Word Reading Efficiency Second Edition</span>

Test of Word Reading Efficiency Second Edition or commonly known as TOWRE - 2 is a kind of reading test developed to test the efficiency of reading ability of children from age 6–24 years. It generally seeks to measure an individual's accuracy and fluency regarding two efficiencies; Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) and Phonemic Decoding Efficiency (PDE). SWE measures ability of pronouncing words that are printed and PDE assesses the quantity of pronouncing phonemically regular non-words. TOWRE - 2 is a very simple test which can be administered by teachers and aides, and it only takes five minutes to complete the procedure. It is commonly used in reading research, classroom assessment and clinical practice. This test is both straightforward and easy to use because it does not require a lot of materials and can be administered by teachers and aides.

References

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  2. 1 2 3 Harrell, Bruce. "Speech-language pathologist". Archived from the original on 2006-09-23. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
  3. 1 2 3 González, Josué M. (2008). Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. p. 673. ISBN   9781412937207.
  4. 1 2 Ellis, Rod (2005). Analysing learner language. Barkhuizen, Gary Patrick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0194316347. OCLC   58970182.
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  9. ↑ Fillmore, C. J. (1979). Individual differences in language ability and language behavior. New York, NY: Academic Press. pp. 85–101.
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  12. ↑ "Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read". www.nichd.nih.gov. Archived from the original on 2017-10-19. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
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  14. ↑ Schreiber, Peter A. (1991-06-01). "Understanding prosody's role in reading acquisition". Theory into Practice. 30 (3): 158–164. doi:10.1080/00405849109543496. ISSN   0040-5841.
  15. ↑ McLaughlin 1992.
  16. 1 2 Dicker 2003, pp. 88–92.
  17. 1 2 3 Paradis, Johanne (August 2006). "Second Language Acquisition in Childhood" (PDF). University of Alberta. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-05-09.
  18. ↑ McREL - The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition, 2014-08-07, archived from the original on 2018-05-09, retrieved 2017-12-07
  19. ↑ Mackey, A.; Sachs, Rebecca (2012). "Older Learners in SLA Research: A First Look at Working Memory, Feedback, and L2 Development". Language Learning. 62 (3): 724. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00649.x.
  20. ↑ Adamuti-Trache’ (2012). "Language Acquisition Among Adult Immigrants in Canada: The Effect of Premigration Language". Adult Education Quarterly, 63(2), p. 106.
  21. ↑ Ward, David (December 9, 2006). Stuttering and cluttering: frameworks for understanding and treatment. Hove [England]: Psychology Press. ISBN   9781841693347. OCLC   65617513.
  22. ↑ Cucchiarini, C.; Strik, H.; Boves, L. (2000). "Quantitative assessment of second language learners' fluency by means of automatic speech recognition technology". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 107 (2): 989–999. Bibcode:2000ASAJ..107..989C. doi:10.1121/1.428279. hdl:2066/75034. PMID   10687708. S2CID   15417273.
  23. ↑ Fontan, L.; Le Coz, M.; Detey, S. (2018). "Automatically measuring L2 speech fluency without the need of ASR: A proof-of-concept study with Japanese learners of French". Proc. INTERSPEECH ’18: 19th Proc. Annu. Conf. Int. Speech Commun. Assoc. INTERSPEECH 2018. Hyderabad, India. pp. 2018–1336.
  24. ↑ Detey, S.; Fontan, L.; Le Coz, M.; Jmel, S. (2020). "Computer-assisted assessment of phonetic fluency in a second language: a longitudinal study of Japanese learners of French". Speech Communication. 125: 69–79. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2020.10.001. S2CID   225125605.
  25. ↑ Fontan, L.; Kim, S.; De Fino, V.; Detey, S. (2022). "Predicting speech fluency in children using automatic acoustic features". Proceedings of 2022 APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference. APSIPA 2022. Chiang Mai, Thailand. pp. 2018–1336.
  26. ↑ The Nature of creativity: contemporary psychological perspectives. Sternberg, Robert J. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1988. ISBN   978-0521330367. OCLC   16354591.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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