The Influence Of Working Memory And Speaking Anxiety Over English Oral Fluency Of Senior High School Students

The improvement of English oral performance plays a pivotal role in foreign language teaching.Fluency is one of the most important components of English speaking proficiency.Spoken English is a complex cognitive activity that tends to be affected by working memory and anxiety.However,previous studies on the effect of working memory and anxiety on second language oral fluency were mostly limited to temporal variables.How working memory and speaking anxiety affect second language oral fluency has not been clarified.As such,this study aims to specifically explore the effect of working memory and speaking anxiety on senior high school students’ English oral fluency.The research questions are as follows:(1)To what degree can working memory explain the variability of senior high school students’ English oral fluency?(2)To what degree can speaking anxiety explain the variability of senior high school students’ English oral fluency?(3)Are there any interactions between working memory and speaking anxiety on senior high school students’ English oral fluency?This study includes two tests and a questionnaire.SPSS20.0 was employed for data analysis.The research results were as follows:(1)Working memory has significant effect on speaking rate,phonation/time ratio,mean length of run,average length of pause and ratio of reported necessary events.Working memory has the highest explaining power for speaking rate,and has the lowest explaining power for ratio of reported necessary events.(2)Speaking anxiety has significant effect on speaking rate,phonation/time ratio,mean length of run,average length of pause and ratio of reported necessary events.Speaking anxiety has the highest explaining power for speaking rate,and the lowest for phonation/time ratio.(3)There exists an interactive effect between working memory and speaking anxiety on senior high school students’ English oral fluency.This study investigates the effect of working memory and speaking anxiety on various aspects of English oral fluency.The results of the study have certain implications for English teaching.