HU LING

Leiden University The NETHERLANDS / Wuhan University, CHINA

Long pauses in Chinese EFL learners’ speech production

Lingüística aplicada

This paper reports a longitudinal study on the spontaneous speech production of a sample of 11 Chinese EFL learners and it specifically observes the long pauses (longer than 400 msec) in their production at three differnet points of time across one academic year. An analysis of the distribution, frequency, duration of pauses and speech-pause time ratio is made in all the three tests. By observing how the distribution, frequency and duration of the long pauses vary as practice in the foreign language increases and learning progresses, the present study intends to explore whether these changes reflect learners’ better control in processing a foreign language and the improvement in their speech fluency. The study reveals that for intermediate level Chinese learners of English, long pauses can be regarded as a good indicator of dysfluency in speech production, and as intensive English learning goes on, learners pauses significantly shorter, long pauses appear significantly less frequently, and the distribution of long pauses also shifts from within linguistic units to more at linguistic boundaries, reflecting both the improved control of language production and the development of fluency in speech. However, as learning proceeds, the rate of improvement slows down as reflected in the duration and frequency of long pauses. This can be accounted for by the general rule of learning.



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