L2 interactional fluency across contexts (ILFACT) is a research project focused on second language (L2) fluency in interactive settings. The project is conducted by members of the FlowLang research group and is funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024–2028). The project aims to provide information about interactional fluency and the factors that affect it, which can help to develop methods for assessing fluency in interactional contexts.
Data collection visit to Germany
Data collection for this project started in Finland earlier this year and continued in May with a visit to Marburg, Germany, where we collected the other half of the data for this project. The data were collected on three consecutive days by the PI Pauliina Peltonen, project researcher Saara Naapila, and a local doctoral researcher, Carmen Kraft, at Philipps University Marburg. The data collection was a success, thanks to our collaborators who hosted us and assisted us in collecting the data. The help of the project’s German collaborator, Professor Sandra Götz, in particular, was invaluable in making the data collection possible. We are also grateful to the local students and their teachers, Victoria Gath and Aoife Holmes-Rein, who volunteered their time to contribute to this project.
Support from the Research Council of Finland allowed Pauliina Peltonen to stay in Germany for four weeks not only to oversee and complete the data collection, but also to visit another project collaborator, Dr. Loulou Kosmala, and to give a guest lecture on social approaches to language learning at Philipps University Marburg.
Researching interactional fluency
The data for the ILFACT project consists of interactional speech samples collected from advanced learners of English in Finland and Germany. The students complete two tasks in pairs in their first language (L1) and in their L2, English. One of the tasks is a problem-solving task where the goal is to reach an agreement on the order of importance of certain items and to solve a problem through discussion. The other task is a topic-based discussion, where the students can freely discuss a topic that they are given.
These interactions are audio and video recorded, and the data are analyzed with a multimodal mixed-methods approach. Due to the multimodal nature of the data, the impact of visual cues on interactional fluency, such as facial expressions and gestures, can be analyzed in addition to more traditional spoken features of (dis)fluency, such as pauses.
The focus on interactional fluency in the project provides a new perspective to L2 fluency research. Fluency is an important part of L2 proficiency, and fluency research has often focused on individuals’ fluency from the perspectives of learning, teaching, and assessment. However, there is little research on interactional fluency, even though everyday language use is often interactive in nature.
Going forward
The project will continue with analysis of the data that has been collected. In a later stage of the project, the data will also be used to analyze perceived fluency with the help of fluency assessments, also collected from advanced learners of English. This part of the project aims to increase understanding of the factors that influence the assessment of interactional fluency, especially with respect to the speaker’s personal speaking style and multimodality.
Overall, the project contributes to research on L2 fluency, the assessment of language skills, and L2 teaching. The results of the project can, therefore, be used to support the development of L2 teaching methods. The project also produces important information on the assessment of language skills, which can be used to develop more reliable and equitable assessment practices.
Text by Saara Naapila and Pauliina Peltonen
Photos by Sandra Götz