日本人英語学習者の発話におけるサイレントポーズ・フィラーが流暢さの評価に与える影響

要旨

This paper examines whether silent pauses of Japanese EFL learners in spontaneous speech affect perceived fluency by native-speaker judges and whether use of fillers, such as "um", "well", "let me see", or "I mean", to replace silent pauses might result in an increase in perceived fluency. In the experiment, three samples of Japanese EFL learners' speech were evaluated by native-speaker judges in terms of fluency, vocabulary, grammar, friendliness, and intelligence through an internet questionnaire. The results showed the long silent pauses lowered the evaluation, but no effect could be verified for fillers.