Relationship between fluency and rhythm measures and proficiency level in spontaneous English speech of
Korean EFL learners
Hyebae Yoo (Incheon National University)
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of fluency and rhythm measures
on proficiency level in spontaneous English monologues of Korean EFL learners. To
this end, an extensive statistical analysis was conducted with 14 measures of fluency
and rhythm using a newly developed corpus of 243 English learners to find predictors
that have the greatest influence on proficiency levels and examine the relationship
between measures. The results show that the three measures of articulation, pause
duration, and function word accuracy rate are the most important predictors and,
among them, articulation rate is the best predictor, confirming prior studies. Pauses
were found to be important not only because they directly affect proficiency
assessments, but also because they alter the variability between adjacent intervals.
Function word accuracy rate was also able to distinguish between the groups of
proficiency levels. This study contributes to uncovering the characteristics of
spontaneous speech that are different from read speech and the validity of these
measures in assessing L2 speech.
Keywords
fluency measures, rhythm metrics, non-native speech rhythm, spontaneous speech,
measures of fluency and rhythm