We compared the duration and number of frequencies of pauses in two Japanese stories read by English speakers in English (EL1), and Japanese speakers in Japanese (JL1) as well as English (JEL2). Five Japanese students and two American English speakers participated in the recording. The results showed the following. (1) The reading duration of both stories was JEL2 > JL1 > EL1. (2) The pause duration was longer than speech for JEL2 and JL1 but not for EL1. This indicates that JEL2 and JL1 had much longer pauses in reading texts than EL1. (3) Individual difference based on two different stories was JEL2 > JL1. This indicates JEL2’s difference in English speaking ability. (4) The strategy for the control of pauses is stable when reading mother language for JL1 but unstable while reading a foreign language as L2. (5) The number of frequencies of pauses was much larger than that of punctuations in the two stories, particularly for JL1 and JEL2. Further, JEL2’s insertion of short or long pauses more often than JL1, i.e., disfluency, was a result of their hesitation or thinking/cautiousness while reading the English texts.
Cite as: Isei-Jaakkola, T., Ochi, K. (2018) Frequency and durational comparisons of pauses in reading two short stories by Japanese L1 and EL2 and English L1. Proc. International Symposium on Applied Phonetics (ISAPh 2018), 67-72, doi: 10.21437/ISAPh.2018-12
@inproceedings{iseijaakkola18_isaph,
author={Toshiko Isei-Jaakkola and Keiko Ochi},
title={{Frequency and durational comparisons of pauses in reading two short stories by Japanese L1 and EL2 and English L1}},
year=2018,
booktitle={Proc. International Symposium on Applied Phonetics (ISAPh 2018)},
pages={67--72},
doi={10.21437/ISAPh.2018-12}
}