JALT 2022: Improving Speaking Fluency with Speech-to-Text Shadowing Tasks


This talk was given by Bob Cvitkovic of Teikyo University. The intervention that he used for this research was a bespoke app through a Kakenhi (Research Grant by Japan MEXT). It’s not publicly available but he was open to collaboration (Maybe an opening for me).

He shared an interesting presentation about breakdown fluency and speed fluency. I am amazed at the number of formulas presented here. One take away from this:

We need to aim at helping learners to achieve higher speed fluency and lower breakdown fluency.

He used 2 treatment (digital app) groups (E1 : 5 hours, E2: 20 hours). and 2 control (traditional method) groups (C1: 5 hours, C2: 20 hours).

He used PRAAT script for calculating speed and breakdown fluency for all pre-post speech utterances.

Once highlight from the findings was that learners in the experimental groups experienced more interactive engagement and faster feedback from the app compared to the traditional methods employed in the control groups.