A multidimensional analysis: speaking style of learner speech across proficiency levels

A Multidimensional Analysis: Speaking Style of Learner Speech across Proficiency Levels Tingting Cheng School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University / 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, P.R. China ctt@tongji.edu.cn Abstract Multidimensional analysis (MDA) is vital for the description of writing style. Several stud- ies have explored factors that may predict the style of learner writing. However, researchers have not treated learner speech in much de- tail. This paper sets out to examine whether proficiency, gender, and academic genre sig- nificantly affect the speaking style of learner speech with a special focus on proficiency. IC- NALE Spoken Dialogue (ICNALE SD), a cor- pus of learner speech, is used in the current study. Results showed that proficiency has a significant effect on Dimension 1, Dimension 2, and Dimension 6. Meanwhile, academic genre has a significant effect on Dimension 6. The findings presented in this paper add to our understanding of learner speech and should be of great value to educational professionals. 1 Introduction One of the most interesting questions perplexing practitioners in language teaching is how linguistic features change as learners develop. Despite there is a lot of literature centered on it in terms of learner writing, few studies place enough emphasis on the change of linguistic patterns of learner speech with the development of learners’ proficiency. In view of important differences between writing and speak- ing, it is no warrant to presume that findings of writ- ing research can be directly applicable to learner speaking (Biber et al., 2016). Additionally, to get to the root of language, theories of language are sug- gested to turn to spoken language (Mauranen, 2006). To keep with similar research being conducted with learner writing corpora and extend the body of re- search into learner speech, this study aims to de- termine whether proficiency, gender, and academic genre have significant effects on the speaking style of learner speech by applying MDA with a special focus on proficiency. 2 Literature Review 2.1 Learner Speech Previous studies have investigated learner speech in many aspects. Ishikawa (2015) made an important contribution to the investigation of factors affecting the fluency of second language. Beltr´an-Palanques and Querol-Juli´an (2018) presented an impressive analysis of learner speech from the perspective of pragmatic competence. Chevasco (2019) assessed the second language speaking ability from the per- spective of identity. Other studies focused on the semantic level, such as the logical connectors (e.g., Wu, 2019) and stance adverbs in spoken language (e.g., P´erez-Paredes Bueno-Alastuey, 2019). Al- though these studies have revealed important aspects of learner speech, to date, surprisingly, the speak- ing style of learner speech has not been empirically studied. Therefore, this paper attempts to give a full account of the speaking style of learner speech using the method of MDA. 2.2 Multidimensional Analysis MDA is an effective method of exploring the no- tion of register variation (Halliday, 2005). It was pioneered by Biber in mid-1980s with a view to empirically analyzing the ways in which linguis- tic features co-occur in texts and how registers dif- fer …

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