The present study

Temporal variables have thus been explored from the L1 perspective, the L2 perspective, and various interfaces between them. The present study is motivated by needs that could be described as pragmatic rather than theoretical. We are now in a situation, at least in Europe, where more speakers than ever before are carrying out their daily business in a second language, English. The fact that speakers speak more slowly in a second language may be obvious but it is not trivial in the globalizing world.

The question asked here is therefore how much are speakers slowed down?

Does the slower rate of speech mean that when time is limited, parts of an intended message may be left out?

This study has gathered data about the temporal characteristics of not only L2 but also L1 speech. This is not only necessary for the comparative nature of the study, but also because one goal of research into the temporal aspects of instructional speech could be to establish target speaking rates for lecturers and presenters.

Studies have shown that comprehension both for L1 and L2 users improves as rates slow. Native speakers in particular often need to learn to slow down their rate of speech, even when addressing other native speakers (Lynch, 1994). This can be difficult to achieve. Griffiths & Beretta found “no evidence of an intuitively shared feeling for a rate at which to pitch ... deliveries” to student groups of varying ability in English (1991). Native-speaking teachers need to learn what speaking rates are appropriate.

Much temporal research has focused on laboratory speech samples, and the little work that has focused on naturally occurring speech has looked at the lectures of university professors, although not in a situation where the same lecture has been delivered in two languages. The genre that is examined in the present study, the oral presentation, differs from laboratory speech in a number of ways.

First of all, it can be said to be neither ‘read,’ nor ‘spontaneous’ but rather ‘guided’, ‘planned’ or ‘semi-spontaneous.’ Secondly, it reflects the kind of task that many people regularly meet, with a real communicative need and active listeners. Finally, the seven to ten minutes per speaker used in this study are longer speech samples than have been previously examined in the L2 temporal studies. Instead of mining a small amount of speech for a wide variety of features, the study focuses on the two variables, that have shown to be most salient in previous research.

Another difference from previous L2 studies is that the speakers in this study, though students, were relatively proficient speakers of English. They represent the upper ranges of English proficiency that can be encountered in northern Europe today, and northern European English speakers are generally seen to be at the forefront of proficiency in the lingua franca context (Erickson, 2004).

Using the Council of Europe (Europe, 2001) descriptors, the speakers would be placed in either the B2 or C1 categories regarding oral production.

The speakers should be seen as representatives of the types of people who need to use English on a daily basis to carry out their work, and who can be frustrated by the extra cognitive load that it entails, despite their skill in the language. The slower speaking rates in L2 that were found in the study should therefore be seen as potentially minimal differences; speaker groups generally less fluent than Swedes are likely to show even larger differences in speaking rate.

A possible objection to simply describing speakers in terms of their speaking rates is that such an approach cannot evaluate qualitative differences in the presentations. A competent speaker could theoretically still include the same basic content in an L2 presentation, even at a slower pace, by eliminating superfluous detail or repetition and being more direct.

Method, speech material and participants

The fourteen participants in the study, six women and eight men, were Master’s students of Engineering at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, taking an elective course in Technical English. All were native speakers of Swedish and had gone through the regular Swedish school system, which begins teaching English at an early age using communicative pedagogy. Young Swedish speakers of English have been shown to be among the best in Europe (Erickson, 2004). Their fluency is generally attributed not only to the success of school instruction, but also to other factors such as the use of subtitles rather than dubbing in foreign language television and films, the linguistic similarities between English and Swedish, and the motivation to learn a second language generated by being a native speaker of a relatively minor European language (Berg, Hult, & King, 2001).

The students were all roughly 24 years old and completing their third or fourth years of engineering studies in a variety of disciplines. They had taken a written diagnostic test upon application to the language department, and had been placed in either the upper intermediate (B2+) (10 subjects) or advanced classes (C1) (4 subjects). The oral presentations were recorded in the second half of the 56-hour courses, so that students had had plenty of time to warm up their spoken English. In addition, the four advanced students had previously held a shorter oral presentation for their classes. In summary, the subjects were fairly fluent speakers of English who can be seen as representative of many Europeans who need to use English regularly as part of their work. In the researcher’s opinion, their English was also perceptually on a par with many of their teachers at KTH.

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