2024 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 1-15
The purpose of this study is to theoretically clarify the essence of improvisation, which has been identified as a problem related to speaking by novice L2 learners. First, we defined improvisation as a process of speaking in which all of the four major processing components in Levelt’s (1989) model activate incrementally and parallelly. It was then discussed that L2 improvisation involves two main problems: one is the allocation of attentional resources between conceptualizing and formulating, and the other is the intervention of L1. In addition, we showed that the paraphrasing strategy can be considered as a specific strategy to support the improvisation of novice L2 learners, including Japanese EFL learners. Finally, based on the above discussions, we proposed the essence of improvisation for novice L2 learners.
