The multidimensionality of second language oral fluency: Interfacing cognitive fluency and utterance fluency

Abstract The current study examined the extent to which cognitive fluency (CF) contributes utterance (UF) at level of constructs. A total 128 Japanese-speaking learners English completed four speaking tasks—argumentative task, picture narrative reading-to-speaking and reading-while-listening-to-speaking task—and a battery linguistic knowledge tests, capturing vocabulary size, lexical retrieval speed, sentence construction skills, grammaticality judgments, articulatory speed. Their performance was analyzed in terms breakdown, repair (i.e., UF), scores on tests were used assess students’ L2 resources processing skills CF). Structural equation modeling revealed complex interplay between multidimensionality CF UF task types. speed consistently contributed all aspects across tasks, whereas role varied, depending characteristics.