The Achievement of fluency in intermediate level language classrooms

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T.C.

SELÇUK ÜNİVERSİTESİ SOSYAL BİLİMLER ENSTİTÜSÜ

YABANCI DİLLER EĞİTİMİ ANA BİLİM DALI İNGİLİZCE ÖĞRETMENLİĞİ BİLİM DALI

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FLUENCY IN INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

Yüksek Lisans Tezi

Danışman

Yrd. Doç. Dr. Hasan ÇAKIR

Hazırlayan Feyza Nur BÜKEL

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I would like to express my great dept of gratitude to my thesis supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Hasan ÇAKIR for his expert advice, feedback and encouragement while writing this thesis. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Assist. Prof. Dr. A. Hamit CAKIR, Assist. Prof. Dr. A. Kadir CAKIR, Assist. Prof. Dr. Ece SARIGUL, Assist. Prof. Dr. A. Ali ARSLAN for their comments.

I am also grateful to Assoc. Prof. Ali Murat SÜNBÜL, Head Of Department Of Educational Sciences, Curriculum & Instruction, for his aid with the statistical analysis of this study.

Special thanks goes to my best friend Gülizar SAMUR, for her great company and support, for sharing the sleepless nights with me from the very beginning of our student life at this University to the end of this thesis study.

I would also like to thank my students at School Of Foreign Languages for voluntarily participating in the study.

Lastly many thanks to my family for supporting me and being quite patient before and during the study.

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I

INTRODUCTION

1.0.General Background To The Study

Among different learners at different stages of learning second language, competence or proficiency ranges from zero to native-like proficiency. The zero is not on the whole complete because the second language learner as speaker of at least one other language, his first language, knows language and how it functions. Complete competence, on the other hand, is hardly ever reached by second language learners, and it is commonly acknowledged among practitioners and theorists that in most cases it would be wasteful and perhaps even undesirable to attempt to reach it.

Therefore , what has the native speaker in the first language that the second language learner lacks and wants to develop? The following features characterize what it means ‘to know a language’ :

1. The language user knows the rules governing his native language and he can apply them without paying attention to them. As native speakers we can distinguish typical, right, well-formed, or grammatical forms or utterances from atypical, wrong, ill-formed, deviant, or ungrammatical ones.

2. The native speaker has an intuitive grasp of the linguistic, cognitive ,affective, and sociocultural meanings expressed by language forms. As native speakers we can relate different sentence patterns to their underlying meanings. We can

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understand the semantic equivalence of two (or more ) different sentences. In other words, we can keep an underlying meaning constant while changing the surface sentence structure. We can understand lexical or syntactical ambiguities such as are met in jokes or puns.

3. The native speaker spontaneously uses language for the purpose of communication and has an intuitive understanding of the socio - linguistic functions of a language in use. Consider the various uses of language in communication: greeting, leave-taking, small talk, enquiring, teaching, learning, letter writing, promising, persuading, betting, requesting, praying, apologizing. These different language functions are second nature in the first language, but in a new language either an impossibility or an enviable art.

4. The native speaker uses the first language ‘creatively ’. That is to say , competence is active and dynamic, not mechanical or static. As users we do not merely possess a set repertoire of phrases and sentences. We have such a repertoire but we can – as Chomsky has repeatedly pointed out – make an infinite number of new sentences which conform to the first language and understand utterances as belonging to the first language although we have never heard them before.

5. Lastly, a native speaker is fluent when speaking the language. That is, he speaks the language at normal pace. Neither too slow nor too fast.

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Our study will focus on the fifth, yet the last feature of what it means to be a proficient user of language. Fluency and how it can be improved in second language classrooms , how students can become more fluent in the target language will be the main goal.

1.1. Statement Of The Problem

I have found in my teaching experience that students react better to and are more motivated by communicative activities and situations that they can relate to personally and which have an element of choice that they can exercise.

Generally, the criteria among people for someone whether he knows the second language or not is his ability to speak that language. A large percentage of students attend second-language classes because they want to learn to speak the language. But, unfortunately, a majority of the students cannot or will not speak the second language at the end of the courses.

The problem for those students is that they may be successful in linguistic activities performed in the classroom, but whenever they go out of the classroom ,they cannot be successful in using what they have learnt. So what can be done to achieve real life communication in a language class room?

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1.2. Purpose Of The Study

Many learners worry that they are going to make a mistake, or that the people listening will not understand them. The goal in learning to speak a second language is to be able to communicate orally with a native speaker. But realistically ,we cannot and should not expect our students to be able to speak like the native. But, what we can expect from them is to be as close to the native speech as possible. This cannot be done with grammar knowledge only. We have to try to reach the level of fluency of the language spoken.

Fluency does not mean speaking fast. A fluent speaker of a language is who speaks the language at its normal pace. The purpose of our study will be to find out how far the intermediate level students in the Department Of Foreing Languages at Selçuk University can gain fluency.

Our study will basically focus on the following research questions:

1. What are the differences between accuracy and fluency? 2. Why is fluency important in language class rooms? 3. What are the factors that effect fluency?

4. What kind of activities can be used in language teaching in order to maintain and increase the fluency of the students?

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1.3. Limitations

This study was applied only to intermediate level preparatory classes at SOFL ( School Of Foreign Languages ), including students ages ranging from 18 to 22. Therefore, it can not be generalized for other groups.It also had a time limitation preventing the researcher to carry on the study and get a better result.This study is only valid for Selçuk University School Of Foreign Languages.

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Chapter II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.0. The Definition of Fluency

Fluency is a term used frequently to describe language performance, yet it is often defined vaguely and used as a substitute for a group of aspects of proficiency in general. Despite this lack of precision in use, the construct of fluency has been defined and studied in the language learning field and has been a subject of theoretical and empirical inquiry. According to Hartmann and Stork (1976, p. 86), "A person is said to be a fluent speaker of a language when he can use its structures accurately whilst concentrating on content rather than form, using the units and patterns automatically at normal conversational speed when they are needed.

The body of literature concerning fluency has identified key temporal variables of speech which can be linked to psycholinguistic aspects of performance and production. It has become increasingly clear over the past 20 years that spoken fluency in a second language is largely a function of pauses and hesitations and their connection with pragmatics and structure. Based on this, we can begin to perceive and anticipate a pedagogy of second language fluency which integrates notions of automaticity and formulaic language units into classroom practice. Research on formulaic language units, multi-word strings or frames which are stored and retrieved as wholes in long-term memory, has rich potential for helping to

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explain how spontaneous speech can occur under the heavy processing and time constraints of real-life discourse (Miller & Weinert, 1998; Skehan 1998; Weinert, 1995; Wray & Perkins, 2000).

Richards, Platt, and Weber (1985, p. 108) define fluency as follows: "the features which give speech the qualities of being natural and normal, including native-like use of pausing, rhythm, intonation, stress, rate of speaking, and use of interjections and interruptions." They further point out that, in second and foreign language learning, fluency is used to characterize a person's level of communication proficiency, including the following abilities to:

1. produce written and/or spoken language with ease

2. speak with a good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar

3. communicate ideas effectively

4. produce continuous speech without causing comprehension difficulties or a breakdown of communication. (Richards et al, 1985, pp. 108-109)

‘

Fluency

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is difficult to define, though it is a term which has been used for a long time with reference to language teaching. C.J. Fillmore (1979 ) distinguishes four different kinds of fluency.

The first is ‘the ability to fill time with talk’.to talk without significant pauses for an extended period.In this case ,the quality of the talk is less important than the quality.The

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second kind is ‘the ability to talk in coherent, reasoned and ‘’semantically dense’’ sentences’, showing a mastery of the semantic and syntactic resources of the language.

Fillmore’s third kind of fluency is ‘the ability to have appropriate things to say in a wide range of contexts’, so that you do not become tongue-tied with strangers or lost for words when an unexpected situation arises.

Finally, fluency is ‘the ability to be creative and imaginative in language use’ including punning, joking, varying styles, creating metaphors, etc.’the impression you have with this kind of speaker is that he does very rapid preediting of what he says, that he is quickly able to look over a large range of alternative ways of responding to a situation and chooses the one that sounds most sonorous or clever’. ‘The maximally gifted wielder of language’, Fillmore maintains, ‘is somebody who has all of these abilities’ (all quotations from C.J.Fillmore, 1979:93).

Brumfit (1984, p. 56) felt that fluency meant, "to be regarded as natural language use." He also mentioned Fillmore's four fluency skills and pointed out that they are related to four characteristics: speed and continuity, coherence, context-sensitivity, and creativity. He further argued that the characteristics are related to four "basic sets of abilities": psycho-motor, cognitive, affective, and aesthetic (p. 54).

On the other hand, Leeson defines fluency as ‘the ability of the speaker to produce indefinitely many sentences conforming to the phonological, syntactical, and semantic exigencies of a given natural language on the basis of a finite exposure to a finite corpus of that language ’(Leeson,1975:136).

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Lennon (1990, p. 388) says that the term fluency is used in two different ways in the literature, what he calls its broad and narrow meanings. The broad definition operates "as a cover term for oral proficiency," which "represents the highest point on a scale that measures spoken command of a foreign language" (p. 389). The narrow definition of fluency is that it is "one, presumably isolatable, component of oral proficiency. This sense is found particularly in procedures for grading oral examinations..." (p. 389).

Schmidt (1992) describes fluency as an automatic procedural skill (citing Carlson, Sullivan, & Schneider, 1989). According to him, L2 fluency is a performance phenomenon which "depends on procedural knowledge [citing Faerch and Kasper, 1984], or knowing how to do something, rather than declarative knowledge, or knowledge about something."

In short, fluency is a definable and observable aspect of speech which can be linked to cognitive processing and taught or facilitated in the classroom.

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2.1. _{Activities To Maintain And Increase Fluency}

2.1.0. Partner Taping

“To give students more fluency practice, students are required to tape conversations outside of class every week. The results of this "partner taping" are encouraging. Students stay in English while taping, develop greater fluency, gain hours of extra practice, maintain a concrete record of their progress, and get a sense of responsibility for their learning. The teacher also gains a better sense of the students and their language problems.

2.1.0.1. The benefits of partner taping

1. Students develop real fluency and ease in using English.

2. Students nearly always stay in English while taping, as they are conscious of a listener.

3. Students get hours of extra practice and a concrete record of their progress. 4. Students have a concrete record of their progress.

5. Students gain a sense of responsibility for their progress beyond the classroom. 6. Teachers gain a better sense of who the students are and what their language problems may be.

7. Most students enjoy the taping and recognize its value.

8. The spirit of the school is transformed as hallways, lobbies and lounge areas fill up with students chatting in English.

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Partner taping outside of class offers a simple, practical, "low tech" method of getting students to develop more fluency in a foreign language and take responsibility for their language practice. Though some additional work is required by the teacher, it is well rewarded.

2.1.1. Questions and Answers

There are many ways to promote oral skills ESL/EFL classroom. According to Klippel question and answer activities are one of the most frequently used communicative fluency activities in the classroom. He states that “learning is more effective if the learners are actively involved in the process.”(Klippel, 1984, p.5) The students’ curiosity can be aroused by asking questions. Learners get to know each other by cooperating and this is done by asking questions and getting answers. By involving the students communication can be facilitated.

2.1.2. Discussions and Decisions

According to Lazaraton the ability to speak a language is synonymous with knowing that language since speech is the most basic means of human communication. She claims that “discussions are probably the most commonly used activity in the oral skills class.” (Murcia, 2001, p. 106) These kind of exercises help the learners to express their individual ideas and get information about other ideas in a more authentic atmosphere. Students find the opportunity to discuss and decide about the related discussion topics. They explain and defend their choices. During these activities the teacher should be careful not to correct students’

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errors too frequently. Being interrupted and corrected makes the students hesitant and insecure in their speech when they should really be practicing communication.

It seems far better for the teacher to use the activities for observation and to help only when help is demanded by the students themselves; even then they should be encouraged to overcome their difficulties by finding alternative ways of expressing what they want to say. These kind of exercises will foster natural communication in the classroom. Thus, the students will gradually achieve fluency.

Also, stories and scenes,such as chain stories can be used in the languge classroom to initiate spoken fluency.

2.1.3. Role Play and Simulations

Two more major communicative fluency activity types are role play and simulations. It is not easy to distinguish clearly between role play and simulation. “Simulations are simplified patterns of human interactions or social processes where the players participate in roles.” (Davison and Gordon, 1978, p.55) “Role plays are activities that range from guided conversations, with participants playing themselves in specified situations with adopted roles.” (Johnson & Johnson, 1998, p. 281)

Both are forms of activities mirroring a slice of reality. As a rule simulations are more highly structured and contain more diverse elements in their content and procedure. Most

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simulations demand that the participants are supplied with background information and materials to work from both before enduring the simulation. Accomplishing the task set in a simulation has sometimes got to be done within a time limit. In contrast to simulations, role plays often consist of short scenes, which can be realistic-as in acting out a shopping situation, or as in pretending to interview a famous person on TV. Role plays may be enacted around everyday situations as well as around topical problems like the generation gap or vandalism. (Klippel, 1984, p. 121)

On the whole, these activities promote communicative group work and pair work, providing learners with a broad range of linguistic and social experiences. It is very important that these communicative activities train the students to use their knowledge of the foreign language flexibly and understand the significance of getting their meaning across.

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2.2. _{Factors In Fluency}

From a survey of empirical research on speech rate as a marker of fluency, speech rate appears to be a fairly sound indicator. In most studies, speech and articulation rates increased with overall fluency or correlated well with evaluations of fluency, time spent learning the language, or composite measures of overall fluency. In a longitudinal study conducted by Towell (1987), there was significant improvement in the speech rate of a student of French over four years. Similarly, Freed (1995) and Towell, Hawkins, and Bazergui (1996) found fluency improvements linked to speed increases over time for students living abroad in a target language milieu. It seems that speech rate is part of fluency.

The most complex, and also one of the most informative elements of fluency studied so far in empirical research is in the area of pause phenomena. Two aspects of pauses have been studied, namely frequency and placement. From a survey of the research, one can see that certain elements of pausing, particularly the location of pauses, can provide us with a great deal of information about the nature of fluency.

Comparisons of the pause times and frequencies in first as opposed to second language speech have yielded some relevant results. Lennon (1984) had 12 German students of English retell a story from listening. Their performance was compared to a native speaker model, with the finding of a higher ratio of pause time to speech time in the performance of the second language speech. In a later study Lennon (1990a) investigated changes in the pause time of four German English students over time. He found that, generally, total unfilled pause time as

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a percentage of total speech decreased by an average of 25% in three of four subjects. Riggenbach (1991) studied the presence of filled or unfilled pauses in the speech of four Chinese learners of English. The results indicated that unfilled pause frequency was an important discriminator between subjects rated as highly fluent and those rated as less fluent. Freed (1995) also tracked unfilled and filled pauses in the speech of American learners of French, comparing learners who spent a term abroad with those who stayed in the United States. She found some differences between the fluent group and the less fluent group in that the fluent learners had generally shorter and fewer silent pauses and filled pauses.

What does the information about pause times and frequencies tell us about fluency? It appears that length and frequency of pauses, be they filled or unfilled, is of some significance to fluency. These results do not, however, inform us about how fluency works or how it relates to psycholinguistic mechanisms of production. The empirical research on the positioning of pauses in speech is more important in this regard. To appreciate the significance of the placement of pauses, it is useful to combine a survey of empirical evidence with some explanations of why pauses occur where they do in fluent and non-fluent speech.

Location of pauses is a strong indicator of fluency. Dechert (1980), in a study analyzing the speech performance of a German student of English who retold a story in English before and after a stay in the United States, found some importance in pause location. Dechert notes that the subject was able to use the structure of the narrative to provide himself with natural breaks in which to search for words, phrases, and so on (1980, p. 274). Other researchers have found similar phenomena. Lennon (1984), in the comparison of second

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language learners' retelling of a story after listening to a native speaker model, found significant differences in pause distribution between first and second language narration. Lennon concludes that second language speakers are 'planning within clauses as well as in supra-clausal units'(1984, p. 61). A similar finding was reported by Deschamps (1980) in a comparison of students' performance in French, their first language, and in English, their second language. It was found that the second language speech showed more pauses within sentences, and even within verbal phrases.

Riggenbach (1991) noted that the pause locations in the speech of six Chinese students of English gave some useful information about fluency. She remarks that the location of pauses had a significant effect on the perceived fluency of some subjects; the location of pauses at clause junctures seems to play a role in perceived fluency. Freed (1995), in her study of American students of French, found a similar force at work in the pause distribution of highly fluent speakers as opposed to those rated less fluent.

Therefore, it is obvious that the location of pauses in speech is something of an indicator of fluency. Highly fluent second language speakers and native speakers tend to pause at sentence and clause junctures or between non-integral components of clauses and clauses themselves. Pausing at other points within sentences and clauses gives the impression of disfluency. What does this information tell us about speech production and the ability to juggle processing loads, which characterizes fluent and native-like speech performance? It has been posited that a pattern of pausing in first language speech performance exists which is a natural consequence of the weight of psycholinguistic processing needed to produce speech. Pawley and Syder (1983) state that the norm in native speaker production is to pause or slow

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down near clause boundaries, generally after four to 10 consecutive words and only extremely rarely in mid-clause. In conversational English speech, an average of 270 to 300 syllables are produced per minute, and over 50% of fluent units are complete and grammatical clauses. It is uncommon to pause more than .5 seconds in mid-clause, generally for emphasis or to breathe. Pauses of less than two seconds are the norm for pauses at clause boundaries. Chafe (1980) states that first language speech occurs in 'spurts' of two seconds, containing an average of five words. Pauses occur at these junctures, usually after a single clause, and are also marked by the intonation contour.

The final and most important variable of speech associated with fluency is the quantity and quality of the runs of speech which occur between pauses. Together with the distribution of pauses, this feature not only serves as a discriminator of fluent and disfluent speech but also provides us with a key to the means by which fluency can be facilitated through instruction.

Möhle (1984) was one of the early fluency researchers to track the length of runs in an empirical study. Both the French and the German speakers in her study produced shorter runs between pauses in second language speech than in first language speech. Towell's (1987) study of a British learner of French, involving analysis of speech samples over a four-year period, focused on length of runs between pauses. For the subject of this research, the mean length of runs increased a remarkable 95% over the first three years. Lennon (1990b) noted that, in his study of the second language fluency development of four German students of English, mean length of runs between pauses increased markedly in three out of four subjects. Over 23 weeks, three subjects increased their mean length of runs by

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20-26%. Towell et al. (1996) focused quite rigorously on mean length of runs in the speech of English learners of French and found that mean length of runs did, in fact, increase over time.

The consensus in the literature seems to be that mean length of runs between pauses is a significant indicator of fluency in a second language. Why is this so? The answer likely has to do with the need to balance skills, attention, and planning during speech and the fact that advanced, fluent speakers and native speakers have a greater repertoire of automatized chunks of language to use to buy time in order to formulate the next sequence or phrase. In fact, it seems that an increasingly skilful blend of automatized chunks of formulaic strings and frameworks of speech, together with newly assembled strings of words, is what enables speakers to produce the longer runs between pauses which distinguish fluency.

As Chafe (1980) notes, fluent speech occurs in spurts, punctuated by pauses at meaning and syntactic junctures. The ability to perform in this way necessitates a facility in handling plans which could often compete for attention and 'jam the system.' When this jamming happens, the result is disfluent speech, characterized by slow speed, pauses at mid-clause, sentence, or phrase, and brief, incomplete, or simplified language runs between pauses. Rehbein (1987, p. 104) notes that 'one may propose that fluency in a second language requires the capability of handling routinized complex speaking plans.' Routinized speaking plans are those which have become more or less automatized and can be pulled easily from a repertoire and encoded into speech. Simultaneous to the encoding and production of the automatized strings, the speaker must generate new words and constructions to encode the novel elements of the message.

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This complex process needs to happen in real time, under all the constraints of time, perception, and context which genuine oral communication entails.

2.2.0. The Difference Between Native & Non-Native Speaker Fluency

"Why is it that most of those who even have a master's degree in English find it difficult to express their thoughts, ideas and feelings in fluent spoken English, though they do it without much difficult in written English?

If a high level of fluency in spoken English is wanted to be achieved , this is only possible on the condition that you are aware of certain fundamental things.

The first thing that should be understood about a language is that a language has two sides, like a coin; a ‘spoken’ side and a ‘written’ side. The ‘spoken’ stage of a language comes before the ‘written’ stage, that is ‘speech’ and ‘writing’ are different things, and are not to be looked at or learnt in the same way.

Most non-native speakers of English find it hard to speak English fluently, because they can’t learn English the way they learn their first language. They’re born and brought up in a country where English is not spoken as the first language. And so they can only learn English in the wrong way: In a way that is just the reverse of the natural process of language acquisition. However, most non-native speakers of English don’t have the opportunity of learning English in that way.

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A non-native speaker of English learns English in the ‘non-natural’ way — in a way that’s opposite to the natural way of language acquisition. S/he learns to write English first, rather than to speak it. That’s what s/he does at school and college. S/he learns to produce written English and the methods s/he had to follow never fully made him/her understand this: The ‘spoken’ style is quite different from the ‘written’ style.

The spoken word is the basis for the written word, and not the other way round. Thus, spoken English is more fundamental than written English. But the non-natural way in which a non-native speaker had to learn English planted the wrong notion in his/her mind: A wrong notion that things are the other way round — that written English is more fundamental than spoken English. So the result is; written English orientation prevents understanding that spontaneous speech has to be composed differently — that is, in a way quite different from the way writing is produced. A language learner always tries to speak the way s/he writes. And this is done by trying hard to follow principles of grammar and usage as applied to writing, and not as applied to speech itself. Fluent speakers apply principles of grammar and usage in a way that is different from the way they apply those principles when they write. And the spoken style has a number of devices and conventions of its own, and these devices and conventions are not derived from the written style.

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2.2.1. The Important Factors That Affect Fluency

2.2.1.0. Packing of information

The extent of your fluency in spoken English depends on an important factor: The way you pack information in your speech. That is, the way you pack words within your idea units, as well as the way you pack idea units within your speech. If you pack information densely, you will find it difficult to be fluent. If you pack information loosely, you will find it easier to be fluent. This is the general principle of information-packing. This principle is of great importance for fluency-development. Written English normally packs information densely. But spontaneous spoken English always packs information loosely.

How does written English pack information densely? How does spoken English pack information loosely? These things happen in the following ways:

A. Written english uses a tight syntax. But spoken English uses a loose syntax. (‘Syntax’ is the grammatical arrangement of words). So, written English relies more on a ‘hierarchical arrangement’ of clauses called subordination than spoken English does. Spoken English relies far less on subordination. What spoken English does is to rely far more on an ‘equal arrangement’ of clauses called co-ordination than written English.

B. Written english uses heavily-modified, complex phrases freely. Spoken English does not.

C. Written english goes in search of the ‘right’ words and uses ‘specific’ and ‘non-general’ words wherever possible. Spoken English does not do so. Spoken English prefers non-specific and general words.

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2.2.1.1. Moment-to-moment speech production

If you want to be fluent in producing long sequences of speech, there’s a basic skill you must have: The skill of composing speech and uttering it at the same time. That is, the skill of moment-to-moment speech production. Of course, you must have this skill not only for producing long sequences, but also for producing short sequences, too. But this skill has a greater role in producing long sequences than in producing short sequences.

The trouble with most non-fluent people is that they believe that the word groups that a fluent speaker produces are similar to those within the brackets. When they aim at spoken English fluency, their aim is to gain the skill of producing word groups similar to those within brackets. That is, they try to produce written English word groups orally.

What they must try to produce orally is a sequence of oral (spoken) English word groups, and not a sequence of written English word groups. Only then can they become fluent in oral (spoken) English.

2.2.1.2. Automaticity

According to Segalowitz it is only in recent years that SLA researchers have begun to realize the importance of understanding automaticity. With respect to SLA, interest in automaticity is nearly always connected to concerns about fluency. Fluency is defined as an ability in the second language to produce or comprehend utterances smoothly, rapidly, and accurately-accompanied by automaticity. Fluency is a highly automatized performance.

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Definitions of automaticity abound. Newell (1990, p.136), for example, describes automatic processing in the context of searching for a target (say, a particular letter) in a display of several letters. He characterizes an automatic process as follows: it is fast; it is unstoppable (ballistic); it is independent of the amount of information being processed; it involves exhaustive or complete search of all elements in the display; it involves no awareness of processing; and it involves “pop-out” of the target item from the display.

In general, the question of how to define automaticity is not the focus of this study. Rather, to what extent it affects fluency in second language learning. There are several possible reasons to expect learning to benefit from automaticity. The most commonly cited one is that because automatic processing consumes fewer attentional recources than does control processing, the more automatic performance becomes the more attentional resources there are left over for other purposes. Thus, for example, if one can handle the phonology and syntax of a second language automatically, then more attention can be paid to processing semantic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic levels of communication.

A second reason to favour automaticity is that once a mechanism becomes automatic it will process information very quickly and accurately, being immune to interference from other sources of information. This in itself improves the quality of performance.

Third, there are strong reasons for associating automaticity with important aspects of fluency. To the extent that fluency represents the ability to speak quickly, accurately, and without undue hesitation, then automatic execution of certain aspect of L2 performance such as pronunciation, grammatical processing, and word recognition would promote fluency. Fluency is, of course, a world-wide goal in itself, insofar as it facilitates communication. In

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addition, however, increasing learners’ fluency may increase their motivation to use the language, which in turn assists them in seeking out and profiting from increased L2 contact. (N. Segalowitz, 2000; Skehan,1998)

All automaticity proposals for enhancing SLA are based, in one way or another, on the idea that extended practice, under particular conditions and circumstances will increase fluency by developing automaticity.

2.2.1.3. Basic speech-initiators

One reason why people lack fluency in English-speech is this: Their tongue and other organs of speech find it difficult to start saying idea units. If you want to say anything, you have to start your utterances. That is, you have to start speaking. The initial words in almost all idea units are simple words like ‘I’, ‘have’, ‘are’, etc. These simple words combine together in various ways, and these word combinations are the initial parts of most idea units. These combinations look simple, and it’s easy to start writing them. These combinations are not easy to say freely. Our tongues and other speech organs do not just yield to these initial word combinations easily. That’s why people find it difficult to start their idea units.

A stretch of speech is a chain made up of several idea units. At the beginning of each idea unit, the speech-organs show reluctance to say the initial word combinations, and the flow of speech breaks up. The only way to overcome this difficulty is to get your organs of

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speech to become familiar with the initial word combinations. And the only way to do this is to practise — by uttering these initial word combinations aloud several times.

2.2.1.4. Register and Style

Over the years, some confusion has arisen over the definitions and use of the terms register and style.

Register. Register refers to differences in language choices based on membership in different occupations (e.g., professors, students, mechanics, sportscasters, ministers, etc.) or different hobbies or interest areas (e.g., skating, skiing, model railroading, computer hacking, fishing, etc.). Membership in each of these groups undoubtedly involves the use of specialized vocabulary, and may even include changes in grammar and pronunciation. For example, a protestant minister typically uses a register that includes considerable specialized vocabulary (e.g., Baptism, Host, Holy Trinity, pulpit, salvation, sermon, etc.), will often use specialized grammar (e.g., thy will be done, hallowed be thy name, etc.), and will sometimes use particularly stentorious pronunciation while delivering a sermon.

Style. Style describes differences in level of formality, differences that range from very casual to casual to colloquial to formal to very formal. Such differences in style are usually made in response to differences in settings, differences in social, sexual, and psychological roles, and differences in register. However, style can vary within any of these categories, as well, based on degrees of personal relationship and other factors. For example, a minister might be very formal at the pulpit during his sermon and suddenly change to more colloquial

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while greeting parishioners after the sermon and become very casual while greeting a particularly close friend - all different styles within a minister's register.

The ability to switch registers and styles and respond appropriately to different sexual, psychological, and social roles in various settings is one mark of a fluent English speaker. Yet often, we give our students no information about the various expression rules involved in these choices. Naturally, such rules will become increasingly important as they become relatively advanced in the language. However, that does not mean we cannot start teaching them some aspects of these expression rules from the very beginning. For example, if you teach your students "How do you do?" at an early stage, it might be wise to warn them that this is a very formal expression seldom used by Americans (except in very formal situations) and that "How are you?" or "Pleased to meet you" are less formal and usually more appropriate ways to say the same thing. Instead of giving them one usually inappropriate language option, give them several options so they can begin to make their own language choices.

2.3. Communicative Language Tools

Communicative language tools are the components learners need in order to actually use language. We must make available to our students all the language tools available to successful language users, not just a subset of those tools. In traditional classrooms, students are taught pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, but these three tools are not enough, nor are they broadly enough defined. Effective language users, whether native speakers or L2 learners, have a much wider range of tools available, of course including pronunciation,

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grammar, and vocabulary (broadly defined), but also including paralinguistic features, kinesic language features, and pragmatics.

2.3.0. Paralinguistic Features

Paralinguistic features are those features of the spoken language found outside the actual sounds being made. Some of the common paralinguistic features are facial expressions, head movements, hand gestures, eye movements, and eye gaze. Paralinguistic features are vital communication tools and all human beings (and some animals) employ them. In addition, these are the tools that many people fall back on when all other forms of communication break down, sometimes quite amusingly, especially in situations where we do not speak the language at all. Thus, effective use of these features will enhance fluency, and perhaps more important, these features may be the one set of tools that learners can fall back on when all other language tools have failed.

2.3.1. Kinesic Language Features

Kinesic language features have to do with the use of the body in communication. Thus we can label the communication facets of distance, touching, and posture as kinesic language features. These features are important because they can be used to communicate friendliness, concern, hostility, and many other complex emotions without complex pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. They are also important because the misuse of kinesics can cause serious misunderstandings. Hence, students learning English need to learn such kinesic rules just as they need to learn the rules of grammar, not because their use of kinesics is wrong, but rather because of the ways it can lead to misunderstandings.

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2.3.2. Pragmatics

Pragmatics includes those facets of language that are directly related to the particular contexts and social situations in which the language is being used. In other words, pragmatics encompasses the relationships between real world knowledge (especially of social conventions) and the language being used in a specific context. Thus, the relationships between speaker and listener in that context would be one important aspect of pragmatics, including issues like power differences and social distance.

Pragmatics would be a simple issue if the pragmatic rules of all languages and cultures were exactly the same, but like all other aspects of language, considerable variation is found in the pragmatic rules of different languages and cultures. Since these differences can cause communication problems, they are differences that can and should be taught in order to improve students' fluency.

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2.4. The Purposes Of Communicative Fluency Activities

Classroom activity with a fluency focus must take into account the key element of automatization, as well as provide learners with large amounts of naturalistic input and opportunities to produce and monitor their own speech. Attention to formulaic language units and their acquisition is another key element of the teaching of fluency. A fluency activity must pay attention to the continuous input and context stimuli which will encourage automatic retrieval.

‘To most people, mastering the art of speaking is the single most important aspect of learning a second or foreign language, and success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the language’. Nunan (1991).

The language teacher hopes to achieve real-life communication through communicative fluency activities. Littlewood (1981), summarizes the contributions that communicative activities make to language learning and to the learner’s spoken fluency under four headings.

1. Communicative activities provide whole-task practice.

In foreign language learning, various kinds of communicative activities, which are neatly chosen and structured to fit the learners’ level of ability, are used as a means for providing the learners with whole-task practice.

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2. Communicative activities improve motivation.

Most learners’ prior conception of language is not a structural system, but a means of communication.Therefore, their motivation to learn is more likely to be maintained if this communication is achieved in classroom learning.

3. Communicative activities allow natural learning.

Many aspects of language learning take place only through natural processes. These processes operate when a person is involved in using the language for communication. Thus, communicative activities are an important part of the total learning process.

4. Communicative activities can create a context which supports learning.

A positive personal relationship can be developed between the learners and the teacher and also among the learners.These positive relationships may help to create an environment that supports the individual in his efforts to learn.

In commuunicative fluency activities, the learner has to activate and integrate his/her pre-communicative knowledge, in which the learners are trained in the part-skills of communication rather than practising the total skill to be acquired, in order to use them for the communication of meanings. Learning to speak fluently in a second or foreign language will be facilitated when learners are actively engaged in attempting to communicate.

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2.5. Classroom Interaction

My classroom experiences promoting fluency in my students have convinced me that we can only help our students become fluent after we have enlarged and restructured our view of the components of language and our concept of what fluency means. Before students can ever have any chance at improving their fluency, teachers must expand their traditional boundaries of accuracy to offer rules of appropriacy including knowledge of the communicative language tools students must be able to use, the communicative language choices they should be able to make, and the communicative language strategies they must use to compensate for the fact that they, like all users of the language including native speakers, lack 100% knowledge of the language.

To facilitate language acquisition, students need much practice. So, teachers must ensure that classroom interactions are managed, not just by the teacher, but by all present. In order to avoid being the centre of classroom interactions, teachers should arrange the desks in such a way that the students can look directly at one another. This helps create interactions among the students. The teacher does not act as leader of the class, but class leadership emerges from within the group.

Instead of being the dominating authority in the classroom, the teacher facilitates the communicative process among all the learners and between the students and the various tasks, giving guidance and advice when necessary. Furthermore, teachers act as independent participants within the learning-teaching group. Any unnecessary intervention on the teacher’s part may prevent learners from becoming genuinely involved in the activities and thus hinder the development of their communicative skills.

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However, this does not mean that once a teaching activity is in progress, the teacher should become a passive observer. It is still the teacher’s obligation to develop the students’ potential through external direction. Although the teacher may be non-directive in general, it is still the teacher’s responsibility to recognize the distinctive qualities in the students (Han 1979) and to help the students develop those qualities.

In contemporary English teaching, the teacher’s function should become less dominant than before, but no less important. For example, his/her role as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group is closely related to the objective of his/her role as communicative activator. These roles include a set of secondary roles for the teacher: first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource; and second, as a guide and manager of activities. A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge, abilities, and actual and observed experience in the nature of learning (Breen and Candlin 1980).

One of the important components of communicative competence is the ability to select a linguistic form that is appropriate for a specific situation (Hymes 1981). Hendon (1980) argues that "today language has been redefined as an integral part of the culture with which it is connected." There is plenty of evidence that a good command of English grammar, vocabulary, and syntax does not necessarily add up to a good mastery of English. There is a set of social conventions governing language form and behaviour within a communicative group.

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2.6. Accuracy and Fluency

Speaking English fluently is a goal for many learners of English. Fluency means being able to communicate your ideas without having to stop and think too much about what you are saying. However, many learners also have the goal of spoken accuracy. Speaking accurately means that you speak without errors of grammar and vocabulary.

Which is more important – fluency or accuracy? If a speaker has a very strong focus on accuracy – on getting the grammar and vocabulary correct – s/he may find that s/he worries about making mistakes. This can make the speaker shy about speaking in English and, as a result, his/her spoken fluency might not improve. This means that, although English is known well, there might not be a conversation. On the other hand, you may be someone who really likes to talk, and are willing to try out language even though you make mistakes. This can help make you sound very fluent.

In order to be a fluent speaker risks need to be taken, new language should be tried out. The first step towards improving your spoken English is recognising what is easy for you – and then working on what is difficult. If your goal is to achieve fluency, try to focus on making sure the listener understands what you’ve said, not on avoiding mistakes.

There is no denying the fact that both accuracy and fluency are essential in language learning. However, in English teaching dominated by the grammar-translation method, accuracy is emphasized more than fluency. Students in such classrooms are extremely particular about linguistic details. They never feel satisfied with their language productions until the correct answers are provided. They are keenly interested in the exact words, have a

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low tolerance of ambiguity, and tend to focus on discrete grammar points and specific syntactic constructions (Barnhouse 1981).

So the question arises as to the relationship between accuracy and fluency and which one should take precedence. These questions must be examined in relation to what is expected of the students when they graduate and what the teaching conditions are.

Modern society is in need of people who not only read English well but also speak it fluently. As for beginners, they must have a solid foundation in English, which is primarily, though not solely, built on accuracy. It is believed that once bad language habits are formed, they are difficult to break. Moreover, for the students who are learning English in a non- English-speaking country, there is little chance for them to learn an acceptable form of English outside the classroom. So, in order to achieve accuracy, students need rigorous language training in their classes.

However, accuracy does not mean 100% error-free, an impossible achievement. But during the controlled and semi-controlled language practice periods for beginners, a high degree of accuracy should be required. Not only are the students encouraged to make as few errors as possible, but they are expected to manipulate the language system as spontaneously and flexibly as possible.

Of course, fluency in language learning goes far beyond that. Soon after the students have mastered the language forms, they ought to be given intensive fluency practice. Then, as control is withdrawn, students can use the language more freely. At this stage, errors should be tolerated, and the teacher should emphasize that error-making is not at all disgraceful but a

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natural and common practice. Teachers assess the students’ performances at the end of each fluency practice so that the students are aware of their weaknesses and become more and more conscious of their errors.

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CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

Introduction

The main goal of our study was to find out how far the intermediate level students in the Department Of Foreing Languages at Selçuk University can gain spoken fluency. The study was carried out through communicative fluency activities.On the whole, it took four weeks to complete the study, giving each week 2 communicative activities. A total of 10 activities (see: Appendix C ) were done with the students including the pre and the post test activities.

In order for the study to be objective, another lecturer was asked to observe the activities.The students both in the experimental and the control group were not previously informed about the study.The same lecturer carried out the activities,who is in this case the researcher.

3.0. Participants and Instrumentation

This study included 2 different preparatory classes, the students of whom had the same level of english.The experimental group had 13 and the control group had 8 students.To start with,the same communicative fluency activity was held in both of the classrooms.These activities were recorded and transcribed afterwards.(see: Appendix A

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)The same procedure was carried out at the end of the study with a similar activity. An example of an activity can be seen below:

One Day In London

Aims

Skills - speaking

Language - all elements

Other — cooperation Level Intermediate Organisation Pairs Preparation None Time 15—20 minutes Procedure

Step 1: The teacher describes the situation: 'You have to plan how to spend a day in London with your partner. Both of you arrive at Heathrow airport at 9 a.m. and you have to be back at the airport at 9 p.m. There is a self-drive car which you may use. It has a full tank. You receive £10 each, but you have no other money. Decide what you would like to do. You should plan the day in such a way that you are happy with it.'

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Step 2: The students work in pairs. The partners find out from each other what they would like to do and what they would not like to do. They then work out a timetable for the day.

Step 3: The students report their plans back to the class. Similarities and differences between individual suggestions are discussed.

Step 4: (optional) The teacher asks how the timetables were agreed on. Did one partner dominate? Did one partner try to persuade the other one? Was there a lot of arguing? Did one of the pair have to give up a lot of ideas? Who made the suggestions? etc.

Variations

In connection with other work done in class (e.g. texts studied), different locations (New York, Sydney, etc.) can be chosen.

3.1. Data Collection

Initially, two diffferent intermediate level language classrooms at SELÇUK UNIVERSITY, School Of Foreign Languages were determined.Both the classrooms had been taught the same amount of english,therefore they knew neither more nor less than each other.Later, the speeches of the students during the communicative fluency activities were recorded by the help of a tape recorder.Finally, the speeches were transcribed using the transcription signs (see: Appendix B ) quoted from Coates.

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A quotation from the record has been given below:

TEACHER: That’s it, ok, thank you. Olgun, what have you chosen?

OLGUN: (---), my categories is cities. I’m from Erzurum but I live in Konya because I won the Selçuk University. (---), Konya is historical city, it has got a lots of museum and historical mosques, I think İzmir is the most beautiful the other city. My family live in Soma in Manisa but I don’t like Soma because it is very dirty city, that’s all.

TEACHER: Thank you, Faruk, what’s your idea?

FARUK: My category is colours. My favourite colour is blue, ee, I think it is more attractive than the other colours. (.), I believe that it is relaxed me. I wouldn’t be black and brown, ee because it is dark colour.

3.2. Data Analysis

The data analyzing procedure was carried out using the Mann Whitney U Test.The factors effecting fluency were determined as the amount of language spoken, the grammar mistakes,the pronunciation mistakes and the amount of hesitations made.Descriptive data such as average and standard deviation were reported.This test was used to find out how far the communicative fluency activities done in the experimental group made a difference in the spoken fluency of the students.

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CHAPTER 4

4.0. Analysis and Result

THE PRE-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF NUMBER OF

SENTENCES UTTERED

GROUPS NUMBER AVERAGE S.DEVIATION MANN WHITNEY U. Z

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 4.31 1.11 1.506 0.132

CONTROL 8 3.61 1.51

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ pre-test number of sentence points. The calculated 1.506 Z value has been found meaningless. The pre-test points of the groups are equal.

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THE PRE-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF GRAMMAR

MISTAKES

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 2.38 1.50 0.372 0.710

CONTROL 8 2.50 1.31

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ pre-test points of grammar mistakes. The calculated 0.372 Z value has been found meaningless. The pre-test points of the groups are equal.

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THE PRE-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF

PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 0.23 0.44 1.86 0.062

CONTROL 8 0.88 0.99

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ pre-test points of pronunciation mistakes. The calculated 1.86 Z value has been found meaningless. The pre-test points of the groups are equal.

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THE PRE-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF NUMBER OF

HESITATIONS

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 3.46 3.23 1.215 _0.224

CONTROL 8 1.75 1.67

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ pre-test number of hesitation points. The calculated 1.215 Z value has been found meaningless. The pre-test points of the groups are equal.

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THE POST-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF NUMBER OF

SENTENCES UTTERED

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 5.62 1.45 3.68 0.001

CONTROL 8 2.25 0.89

The post-test number of sentence points of the students in the experimental and control groups can be seen above. The average points of the students in the experimental group according to the number of sentences uttered is 5.62+-1.45, and the average points of the students in the control group according to the number of sentences uttered is 2.25+-0.89.

The Z value has been found 3.68 according to the results of the Mann-Whitney U Test which has been applied in order to determine the level of difference between the groups. This result shows a meaningful difference. When the average points of the groups are examined, it can be clearly seen that the average points of the students in the experimental group are higher than the ones in the control group.

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THE POST-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF GRAMMAR

MISTAKES

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 3.38 1.39 1.733 0.083

CONTROL 8 2.13 1.55

The post-test points of grammar mistakes of the students in the experimental and control groups can be seen above. The average points of the students in the experimental group according to the number of sentences uttered is 3.38+-1.39, and the average points of the students in the control group according to the number of sentences uttered is 2.13+-1.55.

The Z value has been found 1.733 according to the results of the Mann-Whitney U Test which has been applied in order to determine the level of difference between the groups. This result shows a meaningful difference. When the average points of the groups are examined, it can be clearly seen that the average points of the students in the experimental group are higher than the ones in the control group.

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THE POST-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF

PRONUNCIATION MISTAKES

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 0.46 0.78 0.456 0.648

CONTROL 8 0.25 0.46

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ post-test points of pronunciation mistakes. The calculated 0.456 Z value has been found meaningless. The post-test points of the groups are equal.

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THE POST-TEST COMPARISON RESULTS OF THE STUDENTS IN THE EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUPS IN TERMS OF NUMBER OF

HESITATIONS

P

EXPERIMENTAL 13 1.31 1.65 0.342 0.733

CONTROL 8 1.62 2.07

Mann-Whitney U-Z Test has been used in the comparison of the experimental and control group students’ post-test number of hesitation points. The calculated 0.342 Z value has been found meaningless. The post-test points of the groups are equal.

4.1. Interpretation Of The Results

This study was carried out in order to find out how far the spoken fluency of the students in preparatory classes at SOFL can be gained.The activities carried out during the study were neatly chosen from ‘Keep Talking’ Communicative fluency activities for language teaching, Friederike Klippel,1987, Cambridge University Press. The factors effecting fluency were summarized as the amount of language spoken, the grammar mistakes, the pronunciation mistakes and the amount of hesitations made.

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As the term we are talking about is ‘spoken fluency’, the voices of the students had to be recorded. The recorded speeches were later on transcribed and analyzed according to the factors determined.In order to find out the statistical results of the study, Mann-Whitney U Test was applied.

According to the results of the test, there were no changes in the students’ number of hesitations and pronunciation mistakes in the experimental group when compared with the control group, but a significant improvement in the amount of language used and a dicrease in the number of grammar mistakes made.

However, it has to be bared in mind that the curriculum was not changed in any way and the main course lessons were completely done. The students carried on learning new grammar and vocabulary at the same time using them during the research lessons. At this point, it can be clearly infered that the students had the opportunity to use the linguistic knowledge they gained in the main course lessons during their speaking lessons.

When the experimental and the control groups were examined and compared, the study showed how the communicative fluency activities can increase the amount of language uttered by students and dicrease the amount of grammar mistakes made.If more time given, maybe a dicrease in the number of hesitations and pronunciation mistakes could have been observed.