Fluency, complexity and informativeness in native and non-native speech

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Informational Content ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Rate Of Speech ◽  
Fluent Speakers

Individual speakers vary considerably in their rate of speech, their syntactic choices, and the organization of information in their discourse. This study, based on a corpus of monologue productions from native and non-native speakers of English and French, examines the relations between temporal fluency, syntactic complexity and informational content. The purpose is to identify which features, or combinations of features, are common to more fluent speakers, and which are more idiosyncratic in nature. While the syntax of fluent speakers is not necessarily more complex than that of less fluent speakers, it is suggested that they are able to deliver content more efficiently through a combination of less hesitant speech and of lexical and syntactic choices that allow them to package information more economically.

scholarly journals Syntactic Complexity in EFL and Native Learners' Undergraduate Thesis Abstracts

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Murniati Murniati
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Academic Texts ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
Undergraduate Thesis

<p>This research aims to find syntactic complexity of the abstracts in the undergraduate thesis written down by university learners in Indonesia and the ones written down by native speakers of English. The characteristics of syntactic complexity produced by Indonesian learners and the learners who are the native speakers should also be analyzed. It is possible to extend the type of syntactic complexity found in academic texts. In the end, those extensions should be characterized the English language used by Indonesian learners. The data is gained through downloading the abstracts of the undergraduate thesis in the academic year of 2015-2016 from the UBM English Department alumni database. The data regarding the abstracts written down by the native speakers is downloaded from the reputable universities in The United States of America. After that, the data is analyzed by making used of the syntactic analyzer by Lu &amp; Ai (2015). The results shows that the Indonesian learners tend to write more complex sentences and use subordination in the abstracts. The native speakers, on the other hands, tend to write longer sentences with longer T-Unit and clauses. They also tend to write complex nominal in the abstracts. The number of coordination used is similar between the ones written down by Indonesian learners and native speakers of English. <strong></strong></p><strong>Keywords:</strong> syntactic complexity, syntactic structures, undergraduate thesis, Indonesian learners

scholarly journals English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in ESP contexts. Students' attitudes towards non-native speech and analysis of teaching materials

2017 ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Yolanda Joy Calvo-Benzies
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
Analysis Of Teaching

This paper focuses on non-native accents in ESP classrooms. In particular it looks at native and non-native speakers of English accents used in the audio material accompanying six ESP textbooks. In a second study, a group of undergraduate ESP students of Law and Tourism were asked to assess some of the non-native speakers accents found in these materials, focussing on aspects such as fluency, pronunciation, intelligibility and foreign accent. More specifically, they were asked to rate the following non-native accents of speakers in English: French, German, Polish, Chinese and Spanish. Results from the first part of the study show that native speaker models continue to be present in ESP textbooks to a far higher degree than non-native ones. In the second part, the non-native accents that students rated most positively were those of German and Polish speakers, and those seen in the most negative terms were French and Spanish. In general, the Law students tended to value native accents more than non-native ones, whereas students of Tourism broadly accept both native and non-native accents.

Mundialização do conhecimento científico, distribuição de poder e controle do privilégio epistêmico na Geografia.

GEOgraphia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (36) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Joseli Maria Silva ◽  
Marcio Jose Ornat
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speakers Of English

Este artigo tem por objetivo evidenciar alguns dos elementos que sustentam a lógica de centralidade do discurso científico anglo-americano nas redes mundiais de conhecimento, bem como destacar as mazelas da influência desta hegemonia científica nos processos de identificação das sexualidades no Brasil. Os argumentos do texto estão baseados nos princípios epistêmicos expressos na Sessão Publishing for Non-Native Speakers of English, que fez parte do Encontro Anual da Association of American Geographers (AAG) realizado em Tampa, Flórida, em abril de 2014. A organização das redes mundiais de conhecimento científico tem reforçado o lugar de enunciação anglo-americano que cria as representações de mundo que extrapolam o cenário acadêmico, atingindo também as experiências cotidianas e os movimentos sociais e políticos de travestis e transexuais brasileiras.

scholarly journals Predictive processes during simultaneous interpreting from German into English

Interpreting ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ena Hodzik ◽  
John N. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Transitional Probability ◽  
Semantic Cues ◽  
Simultaneous Interpreting ◽  
Spoken Language Processing ◽  
Advanced Students ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
Predictive Processes

We report a study on prediction in shadowing and simultaneous interpreting (SI), both considered as forms of real-time, ‘online’ spoken language processing. The study comprised two experiments, focusing on: (i) shadowing of German head-final sentences by 20 advanced students of German, all native speakers of English; (ii) SI of the same sentences into English head-initial sentences by 22 advanced students of German, again native English speakers, and also by 11 trainee and practising interpreters. Latency times for input and production of the target verbs were measured. Drawing on studies of prediction in English-language reading production, we examined two cues to prediction in both experiments: contextual constraints (semantic cues in the context) and transitional probability (the statistical likelihood of words occurring together in the language concerned). While context affected prediction during both shadowing and SI, transitional probability appeared to favour prediction during shadowing but not during SI. This suggests that the two cues operate on different levels of language processing in SI.

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