Relationships Between L2 Speakers' Development and CEFR "Range" in Group Oral Interaction

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the characteristics and developmental phenomena of Japanese learners of English along with their raters' perspectives relating to range in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). One hundred thirty-five students at junior/senior high schools and universities carried out oral interactions in groups of three, and ten raters assessed the speakers, utilizing one of the criteria in the CEFR, range. The results of the analysis showed the highest correlation between the CEFR measures (scores) and the number of types, the Guiraud index, and the number of tokens per clausal-unit. Specifically, the Guiraud index provided a way of differentiating between the participants, including lower-level speakers, whereas the Type-Token Ratio (TTR) did not. The total number of formulaic sequences also showed clear developmental phenomena. The correlation coefficients between the CEFR measures and lexical indices were much higher than between the CEFR measures and syntactical indices, suggesting that lexical diversity could be a useful indicator of a wider range of speech.