Abstract

Theories of second language acquisition such as the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996) and Pushed Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1995) emphasize that learners must actually communicate in order to bring about the conditions for language acquisition. Learners who are more willing to communicate may create more opportunities for interaction, and thereby possibly improve their spoken proficiency. In L2 research fluency, accuracy and complexity have been used to extensively measure spoken output. This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate a largely under-researched area: whether there is a relation between fluency, accuracy and complexity, task engagement, and measures of willingness to communicate and actual learner communication and how these change for a group of 23 high-proficiency mainly Asian L2 English learners on a nine-week academic preparation course at a university in England.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.