影响英语学习者口语流利性的停顿研究述评

A Review of Studies on Fluency-Related Pauses for EFL Learners

众所周知,口语流利性是英语教学和学习的终极目标之一。在口语流利性测量中,停顿是其中一项重要的时间指标。目前,国内外的停顿研究主要是从句法学角度进行分析(主要包括边界处停顿或句法结构内部停顿),而从语音学角度分析停顿的研究相对较少,仅涉及语调短语之间的正常停顿。今后停顿研究的趋势是语调短语内部停顿研究,该领域的研究将有助于提高学生的口语流利水平。

Oral fluency is universally acknowledged as one of the ultimate goals in EFL teaching and learning.In the mea- surement of oral fluency,pause is one of the essential temporal variables.At present, the pause research has been mainly investigated from the syntactic perspective （often including juncture pauses and pauses within linguistic structures）.Whereas,there is scarce phonological investigation into the pause phenomena,which has only discussed pauses between intonation phrases.The future focus is likely to be the research on IP-internal pauses,the findings of which may help to promote Chinese EFL learners＇ o- ral fluency.