Second Language Fluency and the Subjective Evaluation of Officer Cadets in a Military College

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Abstract
The present study investigated the role of first and second language fluency in subjective judgments of linguistic, social and professional competence of adult bilinguals in a military setting. We examined the use of five types of speech marker, commonly referred to as hesitation phenomena, among ten Francophone officer-cadets in their native and second language, English. The results confirmed the experimenters' a priori classification of the subjects as high or low fluency speakers. Anglophone and Francophone peer judges of various levels of proficiency in their second language listened to a tape assembled of fifteen second segments of each subject's speech production in the native and second language and completed a questionnaire composed of ten scales evaluating the subjects in three domains: linguistic, social, and professional. The results showed that the eighty-six judges evaluated the subjects more positively in their native than in their second language guises in all three areas. High fluency speakers were evaluated more highly than low fluency speakers. Judges reactions were shown to vary as a function of their degree of bilingualism and their minority versus majority group membership.

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