Mediating Language Fluency Development: An Action Research Study in a High-School Chinese Classroom

Abstract

Fluency development is critical in language learning; however, the teacher's role as a mediator in a learner's fluency development has been rarely explored in constructive learning classrooms. Under the guidance of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) theory, this study investigated the extent to which teacher-implemented mediation aided learners' cognitive and utterance fluency development in one Advanced Placement (AP) Chinese high-school task-based language teaching (TBLT) classroom. MLE theory, developed by psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, provided a mediation framework for this study. The design of this action research followed the test-intervention-test procedure and collected pre- and post-test speaking samples from 21 participants. To investigate the effectiveness of the mediation, three utterance fluency variables that correlate to cognitive fluency development were measured: the number of silent pauses, the number of self-corrections, and mean syllable duration (MSD). The pre- and post-test data showed that both the number of silent pauses and MSD statistically significantly decreased on the posttests, which suggests that the meditation intervention improved learners' utterance and cognitive fluency. Although the decrease in the number of self-corrections on the posttest was not statistically significant in this study, this finding suggests that self-correction is a variable that may require a much longer time to change.