A Pilot Study on EFL Learners’ Spoken Fluency and the Formulaic Language Use

Abstract

This pilot study examines the relationship between EFL learners’ spoken fluency and the use of two-word formulaic sequences and three-word lexical bundles in their English speaking performance. 24 third-year English majors from a central China university are the participants and their speech samples are collected based on an English-speaking task. The temporal indices of spoken fluency which consist of SR (speech rate), AR (articulation rate), MLR (mean length of run) and PTR (phonation time ratio) are extracted as the dependent variables. And the speech samples are transcribed and two linguistic variables of formulaic language use, F2R (two-word formulaic sequences/run ratio) and B3R (three-word lexical bundles/run ratio) are also extracted as the independent variables. A canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is thereafter conducted to investigate the relationship between the dependent variables and the independent variables. Results show that there is a significant relationship between the learners’ spoken fluency and their use of formulaic language.

Keywords

• formulaic sequences
• lexical bundles
• efl
• chinese learners
• spoken english fluency
• canonical correlation analysis