Fluency and the planned and unplanned speech of Spanish-English bilinguals.

摘要

This study focused on fluency, a temporal phenomenon, in the English of nine Spanish-English bilinguals from a Public Speaking class at the University of Puerto Rico. Temporal features of amount, duration, rate as words per minute, pauses, and repairs were examined in two contexts: planned and unplanned speech. Planned speech was produced twice as fast as unplanned speech. Planned speech had more pauses with non-lexical fillers; unplanned speech had more unfilled pauses and repetitions. The planned speech was compared to the planned speech of native speakers and was found to be slower and to contain more pauses and repairs. Individual fluency profiles were created with the temporal features, and the nine speakers were characterized as higher or lower fluency speakers. The speakers' fluency profiles were linked to their socio-demographic characteristics. The effect of gender on fluency was examined; females talked more slowly than males and used more unfilled pauses.