Spencer Ring and Andrew Westover with Dr. Dan Dewey, Department of Linguistics and English Language

In this project, we aimed to investigate factors that influence study abroad students’ development of linguistic proficiency in Mandarin Chinese. We decided to focus on Mandarin Chinese because, as Dewey (2007) observes, an understanding of what factors affect the development of proficiency in Asian languages is limited compared with European languages, which have received more research focus in second language acquisition studies.

In our proposal, we stated that our aim was to “investigate whether associations exist between [participant] personality type, cultural competence, social network development, and language gains for students participating in BYU’s fall 2010 study abroad in Nanjing, China.” In so stating, we outlined a broad scope of possibilities on which we could focus our research. Since we were not initially sure how much of what type of data we could feasibly collect, we decided that this broad approach would be the most fitting to our overall objective to study linguistic proficiency development of second language Mandarin Chinese learners.

To track linguistic proficiency development of study abroad students, it is most common to take some form of proficiency measure from a sample of study abroad students before they embark or at an early stage of the study abroad program and then administer the same measure to the sample of students at the end of the program or near thereto. We took a number of proficiency measures to accomplish this. One was the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), created and administered by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Another was an adapted Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview (SOPI), modified from the original SOPI which was developed by the Center for Applied Linguistics. To measure social network development, we used a survey called the Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire (SASIQ), created by Dr. Dan Dewey. This survey asks participants to discuss who they spoke the target language with and then asked them to group these target language interlocutors into clusters based on the associations that interlocutors maintained amongst themselves and with the student. We also had students complete a cultural competency measure, the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), as well the NEO Five Factor Inventory, a personality measure commonly used in psychological research.

Due to the limited number of students actually studying in Nanjing in Fall 2010, in addition to a small number of volunteers willing to participate in all phases of the data collection, we found we were unable to use the data collected from the SASIQ, the NEO Five Factor Inventory, and the OPI, as our sample sizes were too small to make any legitimate statistical inference. However, with a larger sample of students completing a pre- and post- SOPI (n=20), we decided to focus our research on what we could learn from the SOPI data. Our mentor suggested we focus our research regarding language proficiency development on fluency development.

Fluency was a naturally fitting aspect to investigate, given our sample size of available fluency data. Our SOPI data comprised pre- and post- recordings of the participants answering three questions ranging in difficulty. In order to appropriately analyze these recordings, we used a methodological approach informed by some of the most premier scholastic work on fluency in second language acquisition. Following the definitions of fluency aspects outlined by Segalowitz (2010), we measured the number of silent pauses per minute and mean length of silent pauses. In order to measure these, we used a linguistic computational tool known as PRAAT. The specifications we used in PRAAT were outlined by De Jong & Wempe (2009). Using an approach similar to Freed (1995), we measured the number of unique words, both in terms of raw frequencies as well as temporally (per minute). We also based our measurement of filled pauses, or words such as “um” or “uh,” according to an approach used by Freed (1995). Additionally, we followed Freed (1995) in employing three native speakers of the target language to rate both the pre- and the post- recordings (raters were paid with ORCA grant funds). Raters were asked to judge how well the participants spoke in terms of three considerations: how fluent the participant sounded, how well the participant answered the question, and how accurate the participant used Mandarin tones.

Using mixed linear model ANOVA tests, we analyzed these fluency factors over time (pre to post) and across the three different questions in the adapted SOPI. Results of the analysis indicated a statistically significant increase in the number of unfilled pauses, filler words, word count, number of unique words, and native speaker perceptions of fluency, completeness, and tonal accuracy. The results also indicated a significant decrease in mean pause length. The questions, varying in difficulty, that participants answered also proved statistically significant in explaining variance in the number of unique words, number of filler words, and native speaker perceptions of fluency and completeness. Our most interesting finding very well could be that the number of unfilled pauses over time increased over time while mean paused length decreased. We explain this according to the notion that as students become more fluent, the amount of speech they create is not only larger, but more condensed. Therefore, in one minute of time, students should create more linguistic content in post recordings. Since pauses occur naturally in speech, it follows that with more condensed speech the number of pauses will increase, and, since the speech is more rapid and condensed, the mean length of those pauses will decrease.

Our results have been used by our collaborator, Jeongwoon Erin Kim, who based significant amounts of her master’s thesis on this data. With Jeongwoon Kim, we have submitted an abstract of our finding to the annual conference of the American Association of Applied Linguistics. Also, in conjunction with Dr. Dan Dewey and Jeongwoon Kim we are actively preparing a research publication based on these findings. Moving forward, we are interested in looking for more interesting topics from the fluency data from which we can write journal submissions, such as correlations between the more scientific temporal measures of fluency we discussed, like pause counts, with the more subjective native speaker ratings. Additionally, we would like to look at the connections between some of the fluency data we have and the IDI survey we mentioned. Thus far, the project has been successful and enriching.

References

• De Jong, N. H. & Wempe, T. (2009). Praat script to detect syllable nuclei and measure speech rate automatically. Behavior research methods, 41 (2), 385 – 390.
• Dewey, D. P. (2007). Language learning during study abroad: What we know and what we have yet to learn. Japanese Language and Literature, 41, 245-469.
• Freed, B. F. What makes us think that students who study abroad become fluent? In B. F. Freed (Ed.) Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp. 123-148). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
• Segalowitz, N. (2010). Cognitive bases of second language fluency. New York: Routledge