An Analysis of Speaking Fluency Level

What is it about?

The purposes of this study were to describe students’ fluency level and to identify students’ disfluency factors at the English Department Program of Universitas Negeri Padang (UNP). It employed quantitative research method with the class of 2011 students as the research population. There were 25 students taken as the research sample selected through simple random sampling technique. The data were collected through speaking test and a survey with a set of questionnaire. In the speaking test, students were allowed to choose one of five topics provided and were asked to deliver short talks for 2 minutes. These short talks were recorded digitally. In addition to the speaking test, there were 20 questions with four options as the answers. These questions represented five main factors of disfluency such as task with high difficulty, absence of meaning-focused, lack of time pressure, deficiency of planning and preparation, and repetition nonexistence. The collected data were mainly in the form of transcription texts mined from the recordings of the short talks as well as the answers fronm the questionnaire. The results of the study show that students’ fluency level at the English Department Program of UNP is good (level 3). However, the information on disfluency which prevented them to get a higher score were also identified. Some of the main disfluency factors were task with high difficulty, absence of meaning-focused and lack of time pressure.

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Speaking skill shows one’s English proficiency in a more tangible way. Furthermore, good speaking skill establishes good first impression to the listeners and interlocutors at any speaking- demanded situation of non-native speakers.

Perspectives