LINGUIST List 11.1734

Sat Aug 12 2000

Qs: "Fluency"/L2 Learning, The "" Sign

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>



We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate.

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  • H�l�neKnoerr, The concept of 'fluency' in Second language learning
  • karchung, it again

    Message 1: The concept of 'fluency' in Second language learning

     Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 10:16:47 -0400
    From: H�l�neKnoerr <hknoerruottawa.ca>
    Subject: The concept of 'fluency' in Second language learning


    Dear fellow linguists,

    I am conducting a classroom- based research in French as a second language in order to establish whether or not students enrolled in a pronunciation course benefit from a voice training module (as is done in Theater courses). We would especially like to look at how fluency (or ease of speech ) is affected by this training. Would you know of any research dealing with fluency and how it is measured in second language learning? I will gladly post answers to the entire list.

    Best regards,

    H�l�ne Knoerr ***************************************************************** H�l�ne Knoerr Secr�taire de l'ACLA/ CAAL Secretary Institut des langues secondes Universit� d'Ottawa 600 King Edward OTTAWA, Ontario K1H 7P7 hknoerruottawa.ca (613) 562-5800/ 3475 (613) 562-5126 (fax) http://www.aclacaal.org *****************************************************************

    Message 2: it again

     Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 15:23:46 +0800
    From: karchung <karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw>
    Subject: it again


    On June 30, 1996, the first summary of names for the sign in different languages was posted; it was followed by an addendum on August 20. Four years later I am still getting inquiries about from people I've never met before - many of them journalists, some doing research or writing books, some just curious - from every country imaginable. More articles than I can keep track of have been published in newspapers and magazines from Denmark to Japan. There are homepages :

    http://www.universalshape.com/ and http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~kit/lowly.html It's been great fun. Unlike with newspapers, which are said to be tomorrow's garbage, things posted on the Net never seem to die - they recycle themselves in cyberspace over and over till they end up right back where they started!

    With the most recent spate of surprise letters (all pleasant!) in my inbox, I've been thinking it would be nice to update the survey. Some of the names for may have changed, new names may been been added and old dropped, and some may have been invented in languages that didn't have such a word at the time of the last survey.

    So I am issuing a new inquiry. How do you say in your language? I won't repost the original summary and addendum, since they are very long (you can look them up in the LINGUIST archives if you're interested), but I will list the languages I already have data for: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin (origins of ), Lithuanian, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, and Turkish.

    I'm especially hoping for data on: any aborigine language; any minority language or dialect; any pidgin or creole; any language of Africa, the former Soviet Union (e.g. Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Uzbek), Papua New Guinea, and Oceania in general; plus Albanian, Arabic (new data needed), Burmese, Cantonese (new data needed), Dari, Farsi, Hawaiian, Hindi, Icelandic (new data needed), Malayalam, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil (new data needed), Telegu, and any other languages of India, Kampuchean, Lao, Latvian, Malay, (mainland) Mandarin Chinese (new data needed from the *mainland*), Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian (new data needed), Saami, Samoan, Tagalog or other Philippine languages, Thai (new data needed), Tibetan, Turkish (new data needed), Uighur, Urdu, and Vietnamese. More information on the origins of is also welcome, as are URLs of homepages and articles on . Some of these may be long shots, but I assume nothing when it concerns the Internet!

    Even if your language is on the list for which there already is data, but the word(s) commonly used for the sign has/have in any way changed (or maybe settled on one word from among several that were current) since mid-1996, please write! I will post the results to LINGUIST if there are enough responses.

    Please reply to: karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw

    Sample reply: The word for the symbol in Taiwan Mandarin is xiao3 lao3shu3, literally 'little mouse'; sometimes it's also called lao3shu3 hao4 'mouse sign'.

    Looking forward to hearing from you!!!

    Karen Steffen Chung National Taiwan University karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw