Article Summary: Bilingualism Issues (Essay Sample)

Running Head: BLINGUALISM ISSUES
By Student’s Name
Code course name
Professor’s name
University name
City, State
Date
Introduction
Bilingualism is the potential to communicate in two dissimilar languages. The ability to speak in two languages does not necessarily imply that the individual in question can have the same proficiency in L2 as he/she does in L1. L2 proficiency of the user is undermined or determined by various factors encompassing his/her personality, speaking style and effects of L1. This article looks at the ability of a bilingual to speak fluently in L2 by considering various measures such as utterance fluency, perceived fluency, speed fluency, breakdown fluency and repair fluency since the ability of a user to elaborately and with speed translate his thoughts to speech in the second language cannot be measured directly. The causes of the disfluencies recognized in L2 and the slowness in their speech as compared to the native languages speakers. Rectifying measures of the ability to articulately speak a second language for first language characteristics (Harley, B. 1990).
Fluency as an important aspect of communication proficiency can be described as the ability to speak at an optimum speed smoothly without in between words pauses. L2 user fluency can be gauged from several points, while gauging a speaker on his/her fluency on L2 one could argue that only disfluencies that are connected to L2 should be given much consideration since learning of new vocabulary and grammar can hinder ones articulation of speech. In cognitive fluency, researchers use tools like utterance fluency to measure the problems encountered by non-native language speakers in organizing words in a sentence when speaking. This is done by tallying the frequency of filled pauses and their periods, mending and the corrections. The inferences made by listeners on the nonnative language use can give important information about his cognitive fluency ability. The deductions made may be of more importance when it was done by an informed rater who is vast in the two languages in question. The rater using his knowledge in both languages collects data on the both languages in order to factor in L1 fluency. He then calculates the speaker’s fluency by factoring out the differences between L1 from L2 measures.
Speed fluency brings in another factor of oral speech, and this consists of the rate or rather the number of words that the speaker speaks per minute. This factor is affected by the number of pauses and their duration. The high the number of pauses and with corresponding long durations of pausing, leads to the speaker being incoherent and whatever she/he says may not make sense (The Advantages of Being Bilingual). Reiteration also may make one's speech long but by factoring out the number of times the speaker repeats himself, the speech is rendered useless or incomplete. The need to eliminate reiteration and correction of words lags the speaker since the articulation of new vocabulary and grammar needs one to think and put the thoughts into words very first, this comes by default to the native speakers unlike nonnative’s (Benati, A. 2009).
In further exploration of the L2 speaker fluency, researchers use vocabulary as a means of testing the command that the speaker has on L2 by looking at other aspects of the language other than their oral ability. This is because vocabulary mastering has shown to be a good all inclusive indicator of the proficiency of the speaker in L2. Rectifying the L2 vocabulary performance for L1 characteristics leads to an increase in elaboration of vocabulary performance. In order to verify the significance of the increase, the results are compared with L2...