Correlation of Proficiency with Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency in Spoken and Written Production: Evidence from L2 Korean

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between L2 proficiency and production of 130 L2 Korean learners with four different L1s. We measured their Korean language proficiency and evaluated their writing and speaking on complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) from two story-retelling tasks. To measure complexity, we used the number of dependent clauses per T-unit for writing and C-Unit for speaking; for accuracy, we compared the number of errorfree clauses against the total number of clauses; for fluency, we calculated the number of syllables per minute. The results showed (a) a strong correlation between proficiency and CAF and (b) strong correlations among CAF across speaking and writing, indicating that CAF improve both in speaking and in writing alongside the development of L2 proficiency.