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Second Language Fluency and the Subjective Evaluation of Officer Cadets in a Military College

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Marian Olynyk ,
David Sankoff  and
Alison d'Anglejan
Marian Olynyk
Affiliation:
Collège militaire royal de St-Jean
David Sankoff
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Alison d'Anglejan
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
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Abstract

The present study investigated the role of first and second language fluency in subjective judgments of linguistic, social and professional competence of adult bilinguals in a military setting. We examined the use of five types of speech marker, commonly referred to as hesitation phenomena, among ten Francophone officer-cadets in their native and second language, English. The results confirmed the experimenters' a priori classification of the subjects as high or low fluency speakers. Anglophone and Francophone peer judges of various levels of proficiency in their second language listened to a tape assembled of fifteen second segments of each subject's speech production in the native and second language and completed a questionnaire composed of ten scales evaluating the subjects in three domains: linguistic, social, and professional. The results showed that the eighty-six judges evaluated the subjects more positively in their native than in their second language guises in all three areas. High fluency speakers were evaluated more highly than low fluency speakers. Judges reactions were shown to vary as a function of their degree of bilingualism and their minority versus majority group membership.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1983 , pp. 213 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

Notes

1. We thank Nguyen Ba Truong for carrying out the ANOVA and INDSCAL computations.

2. The marginality of the significance level (p =.10) for the two-way interaction (fluency class x type of marker) shown in table 1 appears to be due to the use of superfluous distinctions within the regressive and progressive categories of marker (df = 4). Indeed, if the ANOVA is repeated contrasting progressives (including transitions) vs regressives only, the interaction between fluency class and marker category becomes unequivocally significant (df = 1, p =.008). The mean scores for the progressive vs regressive markers for the two fluency classes are as follows: