Quantifying English fluency in Korean speakers' read-aloud and picture-cued storytelling speech

Abstract

Previous studies of quantifying oral proficiency of Korean learners of English have demonstrated that temporal aspects of the learners' speech (e.g., 'rate of speech') are strongly correlated with their perceived fluency evaluated by native English-speaking raters (Choi, 2004; 2005). However, these results have been primarily based on speech elicited from contexts where Korean learners of English were asked to read simple passages or orally complete partial dialogues presented in written forms. The current study investigated whether and to what extent the previously reported findings can be generalized to different speech contexts, i.e., particularly to a more spontaneous speech. To this end, this study elicited picture-cued storytelling utterances produced by Korean learners of English and compared the results from the more spontaneous speech with the comparable results from read speech by the same speakers. The current findings indicate that perceived fluency of Korean speakers' speech can vary as a function of the modalities in which their speech produced. In addition to the types of task that the Korean speakers carried out, the present findings also show that the protocols/instructions by which the speech materials are elicited can also influence perceived fluency. Implications of the findings for objective assessments of oral fluency of Korean learners of English are discussed.