The 5th Annual International Conference of the Asian Association for Language Assessment (AALA) (AALA 2018)

202 / 2018-04-05 15:02:47

ICT and Assessment of L2 Speaking: Towards an Objective Evaluation of Fluency

Cognitive fluency, utterance fluency, ICT, assessment

Plenary track > Standards in validating language assessments

In speaking, individual differences exist in both native speakers and non- native speakers in the form of speed of delivery, length and number of pauses, fillers, and corrections. Exploring to what extent these aspects of fluency in non-native speech are indicators of linguistic knowledge and processing skills, is important for assessing speaking objectively. This paper aims to find out which aspects of L2 fluency are related to L2 linguistic knowledge and processing skill. The findings of the study can be implemented in classroom with the help of ICT in the form of interactive software in order to make assessment of speaking more objective.
Fluency is usually assessed from listener’s point of view which may involve subjectivity. This study attempts to study fluency objectively, i.e., exploring fluency from a cognitive perspective. Here, the relationship between L2 cognitive fluency (CF) and L2 utterance fluency (UF) is examined where CF is the efficiency of the underlying processes responsible for producing utterances, and UF is the features of utterances that reflect CF. Participants of the study are 30 L2 learners of English from Hyderabad, with intermediate level of proficiency in L2. Linguistic knowledge test, processing skill tests, and oral tasks are used to capture CF and UF. Data analysis shows that among the three aspects of UF, speed fluency and length of pauses are moderately correlated with measures of CF; these aspects of utterances may be indicators of CF. Hence, these aspects could be measured objectively with the help of AI (artificial intelligence) based software tools.