This study examines L2 fluency in speaking interactions based on the number and type of utterances. The participants were 25 Korean eighth-grade learners of English as a foreign language. They performed five communicative tasks in groups, and their speaking interactions were audio-recorded and analyzed to measure the frequencies of sentence-level and word-level utterances. Results showed that learners of different levels of L2 fluency greatly varied in their frequencies of sentence-level utterances. Construction-based analyses found that the frequency variation in sentence-level utterances was primarily attributable to the transitive construction and a small set of intransitive constructions. Further investigation of the transitive complementation patterns suggested that L2 learners’ use of the nominal complementation [V+NP] became more productive as they expanded their repertoires of transitive complementation in developmental sequence based on a set of complementation clusters. Regarding these acquisitional patterns of the constructions in respect to L2 fluency development, the present study concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.

The purpose of this study is to review speaking articles published in the journal of English Teaching over the past 50 years. A total of 145 speaking articles were analyzed according to research areas, target groups, language and research methodologies for every ten years from 1965 to 2015. A thematic analysis was also conducted based on eleven major research categories. The results showed that a shift of focus in research themes occurred around the fourth decade ofthe journal between 1995 and 2004 with a surge in the amount of speaking articles, greater attention of which was paid to methods and approaches, i.e., specific classroom-oriented tasks and activities to improve students' oral proficiency. While oral assessment was the second most productive area of research topics, the number of studies on materials and media ranked third, due to the trend in computer-assisted language learning in the last two decades. Research methodologies were evenly divided among theoretical, quantitative, qualitative, and alternative types, although the recent two decades have witnessed a noticeable increase in the number of quantitative analyses based on survey and experimental studies and qualitative studies on classroom discourse and native versus non-native interaction. Implications and future directions are suggested.

This study examines the effects of Korean EFL learners’ motivation and anxiety on their English speaking skills with a structural equation approach. The participants of the study are 193 college students enrolled in English conversation classes. The questionnaire on learning orientations, attitudes toward the community of native speakers of English, motivational intensity, class satisfaction and anxiety are given to the college students and their English speaking skills are assessed in terms of IATEFL’s criteria: Range, ease of speech, attitude, delivery, and interaction. Reliability and factor analysis are employed to confirm the internal consistency of questionnaire items and the validity of construct, and a structural equation model is run to examine the relation of Korean EFL learners’ affective aspects to their English speaking skills. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) while Korean learners’ attitudes toward native speakers of English and their community do not contribute to their desire to learn English, their learning orientations are found to affect their desire to learn English. (2) class satisfaction and desire to learn English are found to affect learners’ efforts to learn English, while anxiety is found to negatively contribute to leaners’ motivation intensity. (3) both integrative orientation and anxiety have direct effects on English speaking skills, integrative orientation affirmatively but anxiety negatively. Based on the findings, some suggestions are given for effective second language learning and teaching.