The Quantitative Measure And Scoring Of Fluency Of Spoken Chinese As A Second Language

In the language testing field, the study on oral fluency is insufficient, especially the study on fluency of spoken Chinese as a second language. How to realize objective scoring procedures for oral testing is focused now. From the point of view of oral testing of Chinese, this study inquires the definition of fluency and related questions, and establishes some quantitative indexes of fluency. Using experimental method, this paper makes a quantitative research on oral fluency, and investigates the reliability and validity of the objective measure and scoring method. We find that although the quantitative method can not ensure reliability of scoring, yet it can measure the defined oral fluency validly. The result of the experimental study not only supports the theoretical hypothesis about definition of fluency and evaluation factors, but also provides the foundation for objective scoring of subjective testing and study on training of fluency.