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Bio Data: Andrew Meyerhoff has BA and TESOL training from the University of British Columbia, and an M. Ed. in Curriculum Studies from Acadia University. Mr. Meyerhoff has been
teaching ESL and EFL for over 20 years. He started in Canada, teaching immigrant students
for a local school board, but has spent most of the past two decades in Japan where he has
taught mainly in schools and universities. He is presently an assistant professor at Saga
University in Kyushu, Japan. His research interests include curriculum development, social
constructivist learning, and integrating technology into the curriculum.
Abstract This paper analyzes the progress of Active English (AE) students’ speaking at Saga
University over a fiveweek period in Fall 2007. The researcher was interested in both quantity (speech rate, lexical density, etc.) and quality (lexical and grammatical accuracy) of speech, as well as the implementation of communication strategies. He, also, looked at
speech differences between apparent planned and unplanned speech acts. He concludes that
further studies be conducted to look at the roles of teacher and student feedback and motivation on speaking fluency and accuracy, challenging current assumptions, as well as
the extent to which individual task questions impact on students’ speaking performance. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, he calls for further research to analyze the roles of planned and unplanned speech on EFL language development, especially in regards to
functional planning which has been under investigated to date.
Keywords: Communication strategies, oral fluency, accuracy, lexical density/complexity, procedural/ declarative knowledge
1. Introduction
1.1 Problem As part of evaluation for AE students’ marks at Saga University, the native English language
instructors administer a pre and posttest to see how much students have improved over the
course of the semester. The test is comprised of four sections: listening, reading, writing, and
speaking. As the test is the same for all five teachers who teach the AE classes, in spite of the
fact that they use different textbooks with different materials, teach three different levels, and
have varying teaching styles, it could hardly be expected that the test is actually measuring189
what they cover in the classroom. Still, it is necessary to measure the p
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