Publication details
English Fluency Development in Czech Students Before and After Their Transition From Grammar School to University
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| Citation | |
| Description | This contribution reports on the work in progress of a project aiming at recording and analysing the changes in the communicative competence, with a focus on fluency, of Czech teenagers during their final year of school to their semester at university. THough fluency has been investigated within second language studies (Sauer & Ellis, 2019), the concept has rarely been the sole focus of research attention (Peltonen, 2017). Furthermore, when fluency has been investigated, it has been as a monologue - that is, not as part of an interaction between two or more speakers (Tavakoli, 2019). The study will collect speech samples from thirty participants from two Czech grammar schools. Data will be collected in three sessions over the year, in the spring, summer, and autumn of 2021. The participants will be recorded as they complete three different activities: a two-minute interview, a three-minute story re-telling, and a five-minute discussion activity with another participant. The audio samples will be transcribed and annotated, then analysed for fluency for temporal features (speed, rate, breakdown, and repair) and interactive features (meaning negotiation and circumlocution). Following Peltonen’s (2017) example, temporal speech indicators will be quantitatively analysed, whereas interactive features will be qualitatively analysed. Using a mixed-methods approach to analyse the data will deepen our understanding of the language changes learners experience over time. This project, along with my Ph.D research, will report on the changes and developments of learner language over the study period, and how English language instruction can be altered. |
| Related projects: |