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Spoken fluency revisited
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Abstract An important priority for the English Profile programme is to incorporate empirical evidence of the spoken language into the Common European Framework (CEFR). At present, the CEFR descriptors relating to the spoken language include references to fluency and its development as the learner moves from one level to another. This article offers a critique of the monologic bias of much of our current approach to spoken fluency. Fluency undoubtedly involves a degree of automaticity and the ability quickly to retrieve ready-made chunks of language. However, fluency also involves the ability to create flow and smoothness across turn-boundaries and can be seen as an interactive phenomenon in discourse. The article offers corpus evidence for the notion ofconfluence, that is the joint production of flow by more than one speaker, focusing in particular on turn-openings and closings. It considers the implications of an interactive view of fluency for pedagogy, assessment and in the broader social context.
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“the interlocutor can assist the speaker in maintaining fluency during problem-solving sequences, such as word searches”
From The impact of L1 speaking style, task mode, and L2 proficiency on L2 fluency: A within-subject study of monologic and dialogic speech (2025) · cites this paper as McCarthy, 2010
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Metadata
- Authors
- McCarthy, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- McCarthy, Michael
- ORCID
- McCarthy, Michael
- Venue
- English Profile Journal
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2010-09-20
- Volume
- 1
- ISSN
- 2041-5362 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2114707143
- Cited by
- 129
- References
- 66
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 33.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- English Profile Journal (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
- Keywords
- speech fluency, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, confluence, interactive discourse, automaticity, English as a foreign language, language assessment, language teaching
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