Factors Affecting the Second Language Learners' Fluency.

Factors Affecting the Second Language Learners' Fluency.
Although oral proficiency is a central goal of the language teaching, too little attention has been paid to the complex of factors that underlie the fluent of speech. This problem may encounter most second language teachers and learners. I have chosen to write about factors affecting the second language learners' fluency (SLLF) in order to increase teachers' awareness about these factors and to enable teachers to improve second language learners' fluency. Though there are different perspectives of these factors: sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic. This essay is going to focus on the sociolinguistic factors in particular due to space limitations. The major goal, which is also the main question, is to identify the social factors which affect second language learner's fluency. This will involve also some sub- questions such as: What is fluency? Are there different types of fluency? Do social factors have the same influence on (SLLF) or not? Theoretical background To answer the research question and the sub-questions, I will rely on different writings related to the subject such as books, articles and electronic resources. Proficiency and Fluency One of the problems which faced many researchers is to define fluency accurately. Leeson (1975:136) suggested that fluency is the faculty of the speaker to create limitlessly many sentences following sound system, form and meaning requirements of a given natural language. Fillmore (1979:92) defined fluency as the capability to converse extendedly with little discontinuation and to be able to occupy the time with talk. Hammerly (1991:41) differentiated between three related concepts: second language (SL) competence, proficiency and performance. SL competence is defined as knowledge about, and ability to use, an SL in terms of three components, these are, linguistic, communicative, and cultural competence. SL proficiency stresses survival in

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