The Development of Oral Fluency and Global Written Syntactic Complexity in L2 Learners of English: a Longitudinal Study

Session Submission Type: Paper

Summary

This study analyzed the longitudinal development of oral fluency and global written syntactic complexity in 50 L1-Mandarin undergraduate students over 8 months. Test-taker oral fluency increased, but global written syntactic complexity did not. The findings provide evidence that L2 oral fluency and written syntactic complexity develop at different rates.

Abstract

Little is known about how complexity and fluency develop together within individual L2 learners. This study analyzed the longitudinal development of oral fluency and global written syntactic complexity in the test responses of 50 first year L1-Mandarin undergraduate students over two semesters (8 months). The author collected responses to a post-entry computer-administered language proficiency test required of all first year international students with TOEFL scores at 100 or below at a large university in the US. The students took the test at the beginning of the first semester and again at the end of the second semester of a required two course ESL sequence. For both the written and the spoken task, each student responded in support or opposition to a statement of opinion.

The author analyzed the written responses automatically to calculate mean length of sentence using Lu's (2010) L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer and the oral responses for speech rate (syllables/second) and mean syllables per run (syllables/run) using a proprietary system specially designed to measure oral fluency.

Results showed that the test-takers increased their oral fluency significantly but not their global written syntactic complexity. In a paired sample t-test the speech rate of the oral pretests (M=2.93, SD=0.43) was compared to that of the oral post-tests (M=3.04, SD=0.51), and there was a significant difference, t(49)=2.077, p=.043. When the mean syllables per run of the oral pre-tests (M=7.34, SD=2.25) was compared to to that of the oral post-tests (M=7.94, SD=2.48), there was also a statistically significant difference, t(49)=3.189, p=.002. Finally, a paired sample t-test comparing the mean length of sentence of the written pre-tests (M=19.44, SD=4.48) to that of the written post-tests (M=20.46, SD=4.59), showing no significant difference, t(49)=1.57, p=.123. The findings provide evidence that oral fluency and written syntactic complexity develop at different rates in college level L2 learners.

Strand

• Assessment and Evaluation (ASE)

Presenter

• David Christopher Crouch, Purdue University