Search results for "fluency"
showing 10 items of 211 documents
Literacy instruction in first grade: classroom‐level associations between reading skills and literacy instruction activities
2022
Background Adapting instruction to individual students' needs is known to be effective, but there is a lack of evidence whether students' reading skills are associated with literacy instruction activities at classroom-level. Both the content of the literacy instruction and teachers' instructional support through instructional management are considered. Methods The data were collected in the context of Finland where first graders' reading skills show great variation at school entry but rapid progress. Students (n = 616) were individually tested on their reading skills, and literacy lessons in 35 classrooms were video recorded in the autumn of first grade. Multilevel path analyses were conduc…
Associations Between Reading Skills, Interest in Reading, and Teaching Practices in First Grade
2017
ABSTRACTThis study examined associations between classroom-level reading fluency, comprehension, interest in reading, and teaching practices. Participants were 466 children from 21 classrooms. Reading fluency and interest were assessed at the beginning and end of Grade 1, reading comprehension at the end of Grade 1. Teaching practices were observed with the Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure (ECCOM). Teachers were more likely to use teacher-directed methods in classrooms where children had poorer initial reading fluency. In classrooms with mostly child-centered methods, children showed better reading fluency, comprehension, and higher interest, whereas in classrooms with predomin…
Measuring syntactic complexity in learner Finnish
2020
In the study of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), syntactic complexity can be measured by a multitude of measures. Traditionally, the measures are quantitative and they use production units such as words, clauses, T -units, and sentences. Despite the vast number o f measures available, many studies have used only one or two of them, or parallel ones tapping the same component of complexity. The present study explores syntactic complexity using seven frequently used quantitative complexity measures to gauge different facets of complexity in written learner Finnish. The data of the study consist of texts written by adult and adolescent language learners, and they cover proficiency level…
Words, clauses, sentences, and T-units in learner language: Precise and objective units of measure?
2020
In research on learner language complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), syntactic complexity is often studied with quantitative measures based on words, clauses, sentences, and T-units. The findings have been mixed, but segmenting learner language into these units of measure has seldom been problematised, even if the need for accurate coding is well known. The present study explores words, clauses, sentences, and T-units as production units in written learner language using a corpus of 352 L2 Finnish texts (28,813 words). The results illustrate how written learner language can be hard to fit into the production unit categories, which are essential for the most frequently used quantitative m…
Second and foreign language fluency from a cognitive perspective : inefficiency and control of attention in lexical access
2017
The present dissertation focuses on the fluency of second and foreign language (L2). Second and foreign language use is often assessed by its fluency. However, the connections between language proficiency and fluency are far from clear. The fluency reasearch has tried to establish these connections, but results are varied. In the current thesis, this question is explored within the theoretical framework of Norman Segalowitz’s division of three types of fluency: cognitive, utterance, and perceived fluency. The overall proposition here is that in relation to L2 proficiency, cognitive fluency provides important insights. This is based on the theories of limited cognitive resources, which state…
Utterance fluency in Finnish Sign Language L1 and L2 signing
2021
This paper explores the fluency of first language (L1) and second language (L2) signers of Finnish Sign Language. The phenomenon was approached by measuring utterance fluency using speed and breakdown parameters. The findings revealed clear differences between L1 and L2 signers regarding the measured fluency parameters. On average, L1 signers produced more signs and had fewer breakdowns per minute than L2 signers. However, the slowest L1 signer and the fastest L2 signer were more similar to each other than the averages of the L1 group’s (129.3) and the L2 group’s (71.4) signs per minute might suggest. The number of breakdowns per minute differed between the groups, with L2 signers breaking …
Prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language: Investigating global parameters for automated speaking assessment
2023
This study investigates prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language (L2). The main objective is to investigate global measures of prosody and fluency as predictors of overall oral proficiency, fluency, and pronunciation ratings. We analyzed parameters related to temporal fluency, timing (based on syllable durations), and f0 change from spontaneous speech produced by 30 native and 235 non-native speakers of Finland Swedish representing proficiency levels from beginner to intermediate. We used pairwise comparisons to investigate the differences between native speech (L1) and L2 samples from different proficiency levels. To study the predictability of ratings with acoustic para…
The role of pause location in perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish
2022
Fluency is a commonly used descriptor of second language (L2) speaking skills. Unplanned and too frequent pauses, hesitations, and repetitions disrupt the flow of speech and can cause temporal irregularities at all levels of speech hierarchy, from syllable rate to phrasing. However, most studies that attempt to quantify fluency disregard pause locations. The current study investigates, whether and which pause locations affect the perceived fluency and proficiency in L2 Finnish. Several pause parameters were computed from spontaneous L2 Finnish speech samples. Pause locations were investigated with regards to clauses and phrases as well as incomplete words. The effect of pause locations to h…
Subject-verb agreement of finite verbs in the present tense in written productions of Finnish secondary school learners of English as second language
2012
Subjektin ja verbin välinen kongruenssi on englannin kieliopin perusasioita, joka toimii tiettyjen säännön-alaisuuksien mukaisesti. Ilmiö on kuitenkin kiinnostava, sillä jopa edistyneetkin oppijat tekevät konguenssin tuottamisessa virheitä. Aiemmat tutkimukset ovat osoittaneet, että muun muassa subjektin kompleksisuudella ja semanttisilla piirteillä on vaikutusta kongruenssin hallintaan. Aiemmat tutkimukset eivät kuitenkaan ole ottaneet huomioon oppijoiden taitotasoja ja mahdollisia eroja kongruenssin tuottamisessa eri taitotasojen välillä Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, miten yläkoulu-ikäisten taitotasoeroilla on vaikutusta kongruenssin tuottamiseen englannin kielessä. Tutkim…
Creaky voice and utterance fluency measures in predicting perceived fluency and oral proficiency of spontaneous L2 Finnish
2022
While utterance fluency measures are often studied in rela tion to perceived L2 fluency and proficiency, the effect of creaky voice remains ignored. However, creaky voice is frequent in a number of languages, including Finnish, where it serves as a cue for phrase-boundaries and turn-taking. In this study we inves tigate the roles of creaky voice and utterance fluency measures in predicting fluency and proficiency ratings of spontaneous L2 Finnish (F2) speech. In so doing, 16 expert raters participated in assessing narrative spontaneous speech samples from 160 learn ers of Finnish. The effect of creaky voice and utterance fluency measures on proficiency and fluency ratings was studied using …