Presentation

Exploring the Relationship Between Fluency Measures and Speaking Performance of Prospective International Teaching Assistants

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Abstract

Previous studies suggest that L2 fluency measures can influence the evaluation of speaking performances, but with different degrees of contribution. Such relationships are still under-researched for international teaching assistants (ITA), who play important roles in undergraduate education in the higher education institutions in North America. This study focuses on 114 prospective ITAs at a large Midwestern university in the US and aims to investigate the relationships between fluency measures and their speaking performances in an in-house speaking test for ITAs. Four categories of fluency measures, namely, speed, juncture pauses as breakdown, non-juncture pauses as breakdown, and fillers, were calculated in the form of 15 variables, based on the automated results from a modified version of Quené, Persoon, and de Jong’s (2010) Praat script as well as manual annotation of the speech samples. The raw holistic scores of the speaking performance were analyzed using FACETS to obtain corrected or fair scores. A multiple regression was conducted and the results indicated that average syllable duration and normalized count of juncture pauses were the most significant predictors of the corrected score. These findings are informative for ITA programs to better understand the fluency characteristics of ITAs and their contribution to speaking performances.

How to Cite:

Zhou, Z. & Li, Z., (2016) “Exploring the Relationship Between Fluency Measures and Speaking Performance of Prospective International Teaching Assistants”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 8(1).