Abstract Summary
This paper takes an interdisciplinary and corpus-based view on fluency and investigates speakers of ENL, ESL, and EFL in order to test if speakers from different types of Englishes establish fluency differently. The corpora are analyzed for various fluency-relevant variables, such as filled or unfilled pauses or discourse markers.
Abstract :
This paper focuses on the acquisition of turn-taking in beginning and advanced L2 learners’ communicative interaction. Face-to-face communicative interaction is generally regarded as “the core use of language” (Holler et al. 2016: 2), characterised by a fine-tuned coordination between speaking and listening and rapid exchanges of turns between interlocutors in conversation. There is a consensus in research in both conversation analysis and psycholinguistics that turn-taking forms part of an intricate system that follows specific principles to minimise gaps and avoid overlaps (Sacks et al. 1974; Riest et al. 2015). Gaps between turns are very short, indicating that native speakers draw on predictive processes in communicative interactions (Levinson & Torreira 2016).
So how do L2 learners cope with the cognitive challenge of managing timing in turn-taking? In this paper, I investigate the timing in turn-taking of beginning and advanced L2 learners of English compared to native speakers of English. I present an analysis of five hours of video-taped conversations involving eight beginning L2 learners, eight adult L2 learners as well as six native speakers. The participants engaged in spontaneous communicative interaction in pairs. The focus of analysis is the comparison of the response latencies in turn-taking and the distribution of turn-transitions in L2 speakers and native speakers. The results indicate that the timing in turn-taking of beginning and advanced L2 learners is not as precise as in native speakers: The data from the conversations between beginning L2 learners show that there are longer gaps between turns than in the data of the native speakers. Advanced L2 learners show shorter response latencies in turn-taking but at the same time more overlaps than native speakers. This suggests that this timing skill is a feature of L2 use that requires considerable time and experience to be acquired.
