The Development of Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity in Japanese High School Students: Change over 16 Months

Abstract

This longitudinal study examines how speaking performance of senior high school students at a Super English Language High School (SELHi) in Japan improves across 16 months. The 37 participants, who were frequently exposed to English input, completed a picture-description task three times. The results showed that some aspects of speaking performance, namely, fluency (as measured by the number of tokens per minute and by pauses) and complexity (as measured by the number of clauses and of words per c-unit), developed significantly over 16 months. Moreover, in some aspects of speaking performance, especially fluency and complexity, effects sizes showed medium or large degrees of development. The findings of this study and previous longitudinal studies are consistent, suggesting positive effects on fluency and complexity.