Winner of the 2011 Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize Exploring fluency from multiple vantage points that together constitute a cognitive science perspective, this book examines research in second language acquisition and bilingualism that points to promising avenues for understanding and promoting second language fluency. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency covers essential topics such as units of analysis for measuring fluency, the relation of second language fluency to general cognitive fluidity, social and motivational contributors to fluency, and neural correlates of fluency. The author provides clear and accessible summaries of foundational empirical work on speech production, automaticity, lexical access, and other issues of relevance to second language acquisition theory. Cognitive Bases of Second Language Fluency is a valuable reference for scholars in SLA, cognitive psychology, and language teaching, and it can also serve as an ideal textbook for advanced courses in these fields.

This study investigates the role of context of learning in second language (L2) acquisition. Participants were 40 native speakers of English studying Spanish for one semester in one of two different learning contexts—a formal classroom at a home university (AH) and a study abroad (SA) setting. The research looks at various indexes of oral performance gains—particularly gains in oral fluency as measured by temporal and hesitation phenomena and gains in oral proficiency based on the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The study also examines the relation these oral gains bore to L2-specific cognitive measures of speed of lexical access (word recognition), efficiency (automaticity) of lexical access, and speed and efficiency of attention control hypothesized to underlie oral performance. The learners also provided estimates of the number of hours they spent in extracurricular language-contact activities. The results show that in some respects learners in the SA context made greater gains, both in terms of temporal and hesitation phenomena and in oral proficiency as measured by the OPI, than learners in the AH context. There were also, however, significant interaction effects and correlational patterns indicating complex relationships between oral proficiency, cognitive abilities, and language contact. The results demonstrate the importance of the dynamic interactions that exist among oral, cognitive, and contextual variables. Such interactions may help explain the enormous individual variation one sees in learning outcomes, and they underscore the importance of studying such variables together rather than in isolation.This research was funded in part by a grant to Barbara F. Freed from the Council on International Educational Exchange, New York, in part by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to Norman Segalowitz, and in part by a grant from the Dean's Office, Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University, to Segalowitz. The authors wish to thank Joe Collentine, Manuel Díaz-Campos, and Barbara Lafford, who are members of the research team involved in the larger project of which this study is one part. A special note of thanks is due to Nicole Lazar, who is also a member of the research team, for her invaluable statistical advice. Finally, the authors would like to thank Conchita Bueno, Hazel Casas, Elizabeth Gatbonton, Randall Halter, Guy Lacroix, Anne-Marie Linnen, Magnolia Negrete, Irene O'Brien, Laura Renteria-Díaz, Marlene Taube, and Naomi Yamasaki, who helped during various phases of this project.

We compared the acquisition of various dimensions of fluency by 28 students of French studying in three different learning contexts: formal language classrooms in an at home (AH) institution, an intensive summer immersion (IM) program, and a study abroad (SA) setting. For the purpose of oral data collection, students participated in oral interviews (similar to the Oral Proficiency Interview) at the beginning and the end of the semester and provided information regarding language use and interactions. Analyses included comparisons of gain scores as a function of the learning context and as a function of the time reported using French outside of class. The main findings that reached statistical significance include: (a) The IM group made significant gains in oral performance in terms of the total number of words spoken, in length of the longest turn, in rate of speech, and in speech fluidity based on a composite of fluidity measures. When compared to the AH group, the SA group made statistically significant gains only in terms of speech fluidity but fewer gains than the IM group. The AH group made no significant gains. (b) The IM students reported that they spoke and wrote French significantly more hours per week than the other two groups. The SA group reported using English more than French (although the difference was not statistically significant) and reported using significantly more English in out-of-class activities than the IM group. (c) Multiple regression analyses revealed that reported hours per week spent writing outside of class was significantly associated with oral fluidity gains.Appreciation is expressed to a number of organizations and individuals without whom this project would not have been brought to completion. Contributions of funding, technical support and expertise, or both are acknowledged from: ACTFL (Elvira Spender and Robert Vicars); Carnegie Mellon University (The Office of the President and Bonnie Youngs in the Department of Modern Languages); The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Concordia University (International Initiatives Research Program, Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science); Concordia University (Randall Halter, Eric Buisson, Christine Brassard, Eowyn Crisfield, Nilmini de Silva, Sarah Frenkiel, and Heather Wilcox); Middlebury College (Clara Yu, Michael Katz, Beth Karnes, Kara Gennarelli, Paula Schwartz, Carol Rifelj, Jean-Claude Redonnet, Guy Spielmann, Beverly Keim, Anna Sun, and Alex Chapin). The authors also thank Nicole Lazar for her helpful statistical advice.

Miscommunication in the healthcare sector can be life-threatening. The rising number of migrant patients and foreign-trained staff means that communication errors between a healthcare practitioner and patient when one or both are speaking a second language are increasingly likely. However, there is limited research that addresses this issue systematically. This protocol outlines a hospital-based study examining interactions between healthcare practitioners and their patients who either share or do not share a first language. Of particular interest are the nature and efficacy of communication in language-discordant conversations, and the degree to which risk is communicated. Our aim is to understand language barriers and miscommunication that may occur in healthcare settings between patients and healthcare practitioners, especially where at least one of the speakers is using a second (weaker) language. Eighty individual interactions between patients and practitioners who speak either English or Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese) as their first language will be video recorded in a range of in- and out-patient departments at three hospitals in the Metro South area of Brisbane, Australia. All participants will complete a language background questionnaire. Patients will also complete a short survey rating the effectiveness of the interaction. Recordings will be transcribed and submitted to both quantitative and qualitative analyses to determine elements of the language used that might be particularly problematic and the extent to which language concordance and discordance impacts on the quality of the patient-practitioner consultation. Understanding the role that language plays in creating barriers to healthcare is critical for healthcare systems that are experiencing an increasing range of culturally and linguistically diverse populations both amongst patients and practitioners. The data resulting from this study will inform policy and practical solutions for communication training, provide an agenda for future research, and extend theory in health communication.

In studying second language (L2) fluency attainment, researchers typically address questions about temporal and hesitation phenomena in a descriptive manner, cataloguing which features appear under which learning circumstances. The goal of this paper is to present a perspective on L2 fluency that goes beyond description by exploring a potential explanatory framework for understanding L2 fluency. This framework focuses on the cognitive processing that underlies the manifestation of fluency and disfluency, and on the ways social context might contribute to shaping fluency attainment. The framework provides a dynamical systems perspective of fluency and its development, with specific consequences for a research program on L2 fluency. This framework gives rise to new questions because of its focus on the intimate link between cognitive fluency and utterance fluency, that is, between measures of the speed, efficiency and fluidity of the cognitive processes thought to underlie implementation of the speech act and measures of the oral fluency of that speech act. Moreover, it is argued that cognitive and utterance fluency need to be situated in the social context of communication in order to take into account the role played by the pragmatic and the sociolinguistic nature of communication in shaping L2 fluency development.

This study investigated the role of phonological memory (PM) in second language (L2) speech production by English-speaking adults who were learning Spanish. PM, operationalized as serial nonword recognition, and L2 lexical, narrative, and grammatical abilities from speech samples were assessed 13 weeks apart. After controlling for the amount of speech output, PM contributed significantly to the development of L2 narrative skills for less proficient participants (17.5% of variance explained) and to gains in correct use of function words for more proficient participants (15.7% of variance explained). These findings suggest that PM plays an important role in narrative development at earlier stages of L2 learning and in the acquisition of grammatical competence at later stages.