SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PAUSING A Study of Russian Speakers of English

Abstract

The present study examines the relationship between second language (L2) proficiency and pausing patterns (i.e., pause duration, frequency, and distribution) in the speech of 30 Russian speakers of English performing two oral tasks—a topic narrative and a cartoon description—in Russian and in English. The subjects were divided into two oral English proficiency groups, high and intermediate, on the basis of a standardized test of spoken English. Baseline data were collected from a control group of 20 native English speakers. Statistical analyses were performed to determine: (a) the native norms of pause duration, frequency, and distribution for Russian and English on the two experimental tasks; (b) the effect of the level of L2 proficiency (high and intermediate) on the pausing of Russian speakers in English; and (c) the differences or similarities in pausing exhibited by native English speakers and native Russian speakers (with two different levels of English proficiency) when speaking English. The results of this study indicate that English and Russian informal monologue speech can be characterized as having different pausing conventions, thus suggesting that crosslinguistic differences involve, among many other aspects, contrasts in pausing patterns. Additionally, L2 proficiency was found to affect the pause duration of advanced nonnative speakers in that they were able to adjust the duration of their pauses in English to produce a nativelike pausing norm. It was also found that even highly proficient L2 speakers pause more frequently in their L2 than in their first language (L1). The examination of pause distribution patterns suggests that persons of intermediate to high L2 speaking proficiency make the same number of within-constituent pauses as native speakers. Overall, the findings of this study support the view that adherence to the target language pausing norms may lead to the perception of nonnative speech as more fluent and nativelike. The findings also highlight the importance of exposing L2 students to a richer variety of situations that illustrate native patterns of verbal communication.

Variability of Pause Patterns in English Read Speech of Thai EFL Learners

“…Several empirical studies of pauses produced by non-native English speakers (e.g. Riazantseva, 2001;Bada, 2006;Bada & Genc, 2008) revealed that their pause patterns were different from those observed among native English speakers. Consequently, this study was conducted to investigate the pause patterns of Thai learners of English and to compare the results with baseline data on native English speakers.…”

Silent pauses in the oral reading task: Pausing patterns and reasons for pauses

“…For example, Riazantseva (2001) examined the relationship between L2 proficiency, and pausing patterns in 30 Russian speakers of English performing two oral tasks and suggested that English and Russian monologue speech have different pausing conventions.…”

“…Pause duration, frequency, and distribution are the most frequently researched parameters related to pausing patterns (Chen, 2006;Kuo and Chiang, 2005;Riazantseva, 2001), and the reported pausing patterns vary across oral tasks (Kuo and Chiang, 2005) and across studies. Although earlier studies have indicated that L2 proficiency is a factor affecting pause patterns, only learners with high and intermediate English oral proficiency have been examined in these studies (Kuo and Chiang, 2005), and few studies have examined learners with other oral proficiency levels (Chen, 2009).…”

The effects of pause in English speaking evaluation

“…Kormos & Dénes (2004) investigated the fluency of Hungarian L2 learners at two proficiency levels and reported that advanced L2 learners produced shorter pauses than those of low level counterparts. Both high level learners in Anderson-Hsieh & Venkatagiri (1994) and Riazantseva (2001) were reported to have similar pause length as those of native speakers. However, the lower level learners produced approximately 1.3 (Riazantseva, 2001) to 1.6 times (Kormos & Dénes, 2004) longer pauses than those of higher level learners in their data of spontaneous narratives, and almost 2 times (Anderson-Hsieh & Venkatagiri, 1994) longer pauses than those of higher levels in their read speech data.…”

“…Pickering (1999) also reported similar results on Chinese L2 learners. Riazantseva (2001) investigated the relationship between L2 proficiency levels and pausing patterns of Russian learners of English. She reported that high level learners made significantly shorter pauses than their low level counterparts.…”