This work reports on the construction of a rated database of spontaneous speech produced by second language (L2) learners of English. Spontaneous speech was collected from 28 L2 speakers representing six language backgrounds and five different proficiency levels. Speech was elicited using formats similar to that of the TOEFL iBT and the Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK) test. ...

Automaticity and real-time aspects of performance are directly relevant to L2 spoken language proficiency. This paper analyzes data from L2 speakers of English and Spanish spread over a range of proficiency levels as identified by traditional holistic, rubric-based human ratings. In spontaneous speech samples from these L2 populations, we studied timed measures of spoken fluency (linguistic uni...

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters’ assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were analyzed for 12 lexical variables targeting diverse ...

Literature is replete with the studies focusing on the role of vocabulary knowledge in second language receptive skills. However, the relationship between the aspects of vocabulary knowledge and productive skills in general, and the speaking performance in particular has remained scanty in the related literature. This paper examined the relationship between knowledge of L2 vocabulary size at di...

This is an experimental study which aimed at investigating the ralationsship between working memory capacity and measures of L2 speech performance in a picture description task. The main assumption underlying the present study was that L2 speaking is a complex cognitive task which is carried out within the constraints of a limited-capacity system, namely, working memory. In this system, there a...

Second Language Comprehensibility Revisited: Investigating the Effects of Learner Background Dustin Crowther The current study investigated first language (L1) effects on listener judgment of comprehensibility and accentedness in second language (L2) speech. The participants were 60 university-level adult speakers of English from four L1 backgrounds (Chinese, Romance, Hindi, Farsi), with 15 spe...

This  study  examined  the  effects  of  individual  difference  (ID)  factors  on  changing  pragmatic abilities  among  L2  learners  of  English.  Participants  were  48  Japanese  EFL  students  in  an English-medium  university  in  Japan.  They  completed  a  pragmatic  speaking  test  (k=12)  that assessed  their  ability  to  produce  two  speech  acts:  requests  and  opinions,  in  hi...